


Kite Strings and Dragon Wings

by dragonofdispair



Series: Kite Strings [2]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dragons, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, BAMF Jazz, Canon What Canon?, Canon-Typical Violence, Coming of Age, Fairytale Physics, Gen, Knights - Freeform, M/M, Sorcerers, Storytelling, fairytale, hero’s journey, kites
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 00:19:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 34,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6351319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A dragon has taken the Prince of Vos for its own nefarious purposes, and a Knight of Primus must set out to rescue him or Iacon is doomed. But there’s something wrong with this slightly fractured fairytale, because Jazz is no knight in shining armor and Starscream certainly isn’t his one true love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One — The Ordinary World

**Author's Note:**

> So I started this story back in January, and am finally ready to start posting. Yay, right? I love the fairytale!TF genre, small as it is. But I was running into a frustration with a certain sub-section of those stories: the dragons all seemed to be a sort of after thoughts in the story. They terrorized cities, but when it came time to slay them the hero set out and usually accomplished it within three paragraphs. Appropriate, perhaps, for stories that were mostly about the romance between the hero and the later-to-be-kidnapped mech, with the dragon as the sort of icing on the romance, but I really thought that one that was more about the adventure should be written (and if anyone knows of one that is, that I haven’t found yet, a rec would be appreciated). I didn’t sit down and write this the first time I thought that, or the second, or even the third, but eventually that thought spawned a story—this story. Of course it mutated several times along the way, but that’s part of the fun of doing this, right?
> 
> Gratuitous amounts of gratitude is owed to everyone in the writing group, who endured months of my ranting, read all my hideous first drafts, and offered endless encouragement when the story went sideways on me and I was ready to throw it at a wall. Additional thanks are offered to FHC_Lynn, Rizobact, and 12drakon because in addition to the above they also took the time to correct my grammar, check continuity issues, and smooth over my word choices.
> 
> And thank you, readers, for taking the time to click on the page, endure this horribly long author’s note, and read the story. I hope you all enjoy reading the story as much as I enjoyed telling it. Updates are on Fridays.
> 
> Onward!

_Here the four winds know_

_Who will break and who will bend_

          — Manowar, [ "Master of the Wind" ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfGvGVUAE8U&list=PLRhPRSCaz7Xd5_E54lIUuNhHJKeD8ONBi&index=8)

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_“Neither the Storm Sorcerers nor the Knights of Primus are the only paths to greatness, little Wing. One of the greatest heroes ever built and raised in Iacon was never more than a squire, and a less than stellar one at that…”_

.

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The towers of Iacon gleamed in the fading light of the sun. Once the night had been a time of rest and solace even during the most intense Decepticon sieges. More than just a Primus-decreed time of rest and prayer, dragons hunted when the moon rose. Even Decepticons hadn’t dared to press their attacks during the night.

No longer.

Now, as the sun’s light faded, the towers — what was left of them anyway — lit up from within. Iacon’s paladins awoke and prepared to repel the threat to their city.

Since they had begun generations ago, the intermittent invasions of the Decepticon horde had wrought many, many changes on the great city of Iacon. Optimus had seen maps, dated to before the invaders had first come. Once, the streets had been aligned into a perfect spoked wheel. Main thoroughfares had lanced from the Temple of Primus and palace grounds like the light of the sun, all the way to the outermost walls. Now, buildings had burned and been rebuilt into an unnavigable maze of traps to slow any Decepticons that breached the walls, which themselves were now more rubble and prayer than effective protection.

And most recently the lights, added to combat this most recent iteration of the Decepticon threat. Megatron had forged an alliance with the necromancer academies of Tarn. This time, the Decepticons had come not just with the barbarians of Kaon but with scores of undead terrorcons. The undead could not walk under the light of the sun and barbarians did not attack under the moon. The armies of Iacon may be the greatest on Cybertron and the Paladins of Primus its greatest fighters, but the constant fighting was taking its toll. Slowly but surely, they were losing, and each fallen warrior on either side rose the next night under the control of one of Soundwave’s necromancers.

Hope, Optimus thought as he watched the sunset, lay on the horizon. There, visible as a trio of stars that glowed with the last rays of the sun, was Vos. The floating cities of the seekers. Iacon’s envoys had finally secured an alliance, which was to be formalized by his own bonding to one of Vos’ three ruling seekers in just seven orns. Vos’ own storm sorcerers would fly to Iacon’s defense that very night.

Just seven orns…

Iacon’s daytime commander of the armies joined Optimus on the balcony. Ultra Magnus held out the Starsaber to Iacon’s Prime. Optimus smiled at his friend. “I heard the servants gossiping as I woke this evening.”

Ultra Magnus just waited for Optimus to take the sword, which had rested on the altar of Primus in the temple through the day. “Servants are always gossiping,” he said dismissively.

The Prime chuckled; Magnus knew to what he was referring, but he never acknowledged his own skill at arms. “So the Decepticons _haven’t_ raised the battle-prize again for killing you?”

“How would I know such a thing? I don’t listen around their fires.”

Optimus didn’t answer. Iacon had few spies left who could listen at the Decepticons’ fires, and all of them had higher priorities than listening to the horde’s gossip. But the battle-prizes offered for killing significant Iaconi defenders was broadcast via open radio channels for everyone, enemy and ally alike, to hear. It was well known that there was no one in Iacon outside the Prime himself the Decepticons would like more to see slain. The commander was a steady defensive tactician and wielded the holy hammer of Solus Prime with devastating skill. Optimus watched the last of the sun’s light slip beneath the horizon. The undead would be rising soon. “Help me prepare?” he asked his long time friend.

“Of course, Prime.” Magnus stepped back respectfully to precede him to the rack that contained the Prime’s weapon attachments. Once the Paladins of Primus had gone into battle with nothing but their blessed swords and hammers. These orns the Prime went into battle with a large caliber chain gun and a rocket cannon in addition to the Starsaber.

“Isn’t your squire supposed to help with these?” Ultra Magnus’ frown was disapproving. Prime, in his opinion, was far too lax with his squire’s discipline.

Optimus held out his arm while Magnus carefully attached all the contact points and control wires of the chain gun. Magnus and his squire were very different helpers. Magnus could heft the massive gun easily, but had difficulty with the small wires where the much younger — and, as Iacon no longer had the resources the city had had when Optimus was built, consequently much more lightly constructed — mech had none. “The life of a Paladin of Primus is not for everyone, my friend. He asked for this because he knows we need night runners, not because he hears Primus’ call — we all know this. Jazz does his part to defend Iacon. We can ask no more than that.”

Ultra Magnus helped him with the much simpler rocket cannon, then handed him the Starsaber again. “If you say so, my Prime.”

“I do.” With that, Optimus left his day commander to his rest and strode out of his quarters.

And onto the battlefield.

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Above, perched on the high rooftop of the palace tower, Jazz made his own preparations for the night’s combat.

Technically he was too young to participate in the fighting, but Iacon’s defenses were wearing thin. They held now only on the efforts and bravery of its fighters — ALL its fighters. So even the newsparks (not that _Jazz_ considered himself a newspark; he may be one of the youngest, but he _had_ been sparked before this latest wave of Decepticon attacks had begun a vorn ago) were pressed to assist in the fighting. He and the others in his creche ran messages so they couldn’t be intercepted by Soundwave and delivered energon and ammunition to flagging fighters so they could continue the defense.

Most of the youngsters weren’t allowed to run during the night fighting. Untrained in most weaponry, they were equipped with tasers to take down any barbarians that tried to stop them. Nonlethally, to minimize the impact of accidents. Tasers didn’t work on terrorcons though, so he as a squire had been trained in using a scattershot blaster and was assigned to do the same job the others did, only at night. The scattershot blaster lacked Primus’ blessing and couldn’t kill the terrorcons but a well-placed shot could still maim.

And Jazz had something else the rest of his creche didn’t, which he liked to think contributed to Optimus’ willingness to take him on as a squire and assign him this duty. Carefully he checked over the lightweight hybrid carbon nanotube / fiberglass frame and the thin, strong graphene sheeting of the kite. Large enough to carry a small mech short distances and edged in kevlar to protect it from the occasional impact, it danced the fine line between light and strong, between durable and fragile. By itself it was a work of engineering art, but it was more than even that. It was the culmination of a dream.

He’d always been fascinated by kites. When he’d first been sparked he’d spend joors just flying his little handmade kites while perched on the roofs of the temple’s creche. Those first kites been very crude, but he’d learned to make them bigger and better and more cheerful and it hadn’t taken long before he could make anyone look up to see which bright spot of color he’d be flying next. He’d even made a beautiful dragon-kite that had been so realistic that the paladins had assembled to fight off the threat.

That had been before Megatron had ruled the Decepticons. When the night had been a time of rest and play.

Now the only kite Jazz flew was the battle kite he had designed and Wheeljack had helped him build. Carefully he checked the integrity of the lines that would connect it to the handle-contraption and the attachment points on his shoulders. Made from some weird carbon nanotube / protein fiber mix Perceptor had developed to anchor skyships, these two super thin versions and the handle attached with magnets to his armor. Secure, but quickly released if the kite got caught on something. Which... _had_ happened a few times.

Finding everything in perfect shape, he attached the kite.

Below him, Prime strode out of the palace and toward the crumbling city gates. Ooops. He was supposed to help Optimus get ready.

Nothing for it now.

Jazz held the delta-shaped kite to the wind until it caught a breeze. Grinning, he leapt off the tower and flipped himself on top of the kite. It gave an unnerving lurch as his weight settled on the frame, then speed, gravity and drag hit that perfect balance and he glided — soared — down from the very top of the tower’s roof.

As he fell past the first lower towers, he adjusted his weight to increase the speed of the dive. Faster and faster, until air almost spilled out from beneath the sails, then he sent himself sideways, spinning them both in a dizzying free fall. Laughing, he waited just a moment longer, then he shot his grappling hook out to the side to snag the edge of a nearby roof. He used the momentum of the free fall to pull himself back up into the air with another spin. Behind him, he felt the kite hit the nadir of its plummet from the sky and jerk back up, giving a twirl of its own as the lines untwisted and the kite caught air again.

Battle not yet joined, Jazz heard a few mechs cheer for the trick. He blasted a techno remix of the _Hymn to Primus_ as he kept moving.

That was the secret to flying a kite — keep moving.

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	2. Chapter two — The Call to Adventure

It was nearly dawn. Jazz, from his vantage point on the roofs, could see the first deceptive light. It was still utterly dark on the ruined streets where the lights did not penetrate the gloom, save for headlights and lanterns and the sick purple glow of the terrorcons where the magic that animated them bled from the gaps in their dead armor. He did a flashy spin and blasted the heavy drums of an old recording of _Hail to the Dawn_ anyway.

The knights were too disciplined to look up as he passed, but the music had an effect. Jazz was always the first to spot the sun and he _always_ announced it with _that_ song. The night-fight was almost over. Soon the terrorcons would retreat and the paladins could rest while Iacon’s army fought the Decepticons during the day. As he passed — delivering ammunition and energon to all corners of the crumbling walls and streets — the knights fought with renewed vigor in his wake.

The sound of hope, amid the relentlessness of the terrorcon horde.

In the keeps and camps, the armies of both the Decepticons and Iacon would be rousing, preparing. Unlike in the evening, when both were exhausted enough to give each other a short time to rest before the terrorcons rose, the Decepticons attacked before their undead were forced to retreat, hoping to take advantage of the exhausted paladins before they were replaced by fresh troops. As much as it was an awaited-for sign of hope, _Hail to the Dawn_ was a warning too, and it was with the last of their energy reserves the paladins met the rush of Decepticon barbarians.

One knight fell, spent, to his knees and Jazz executed a sharp 180° turn that nearly tangled the kite around a tattered chimney to bring his scattershot to bear on the advancing Decepticon, only to watch two regular army warriors, charging ahead of their fellows, leap over the fallen paladin and engage the enemy.

 _Hail to the Dawn_ — not Jazz’s old version, but the newer, more boring, official one — blasted over what was left of the city’s communications systems, marking the exact moment the terrorcons melted away under the sun. The paladins retreated.

The battle went on.

Jazz’s legs nearly collapsed when he landed on the street to join the trudge towards the undamaged center of the city.

Bumblebee — one of Jazz’s creche-mates — raced up, tumbling out of his alt-form long enough to pass Jazz a cube of energon before racing off to deliver fuel to other, worse-off fighters.

A Cybertron-shattering _BOOM!_ rocked the battlefield, the sheer overwhelming unexpectedness of the sound halting the fighting while the warriors recovered. Jazz didn’t wait for that; his reflex was to take to the roofs. Sound became wind and wind called the kite. He was up on the roof, spinning through the wind towards the impact while those on the ground were still deciding if they could come out of their cover. Debris flew through the air and he kept the kite close as he dodged it.

He found the impact site at the edge of the city, where the wall had once existed. Perhaps if the wall had still been there it might have withstood the impact better than the pickets and trenches that had replaced it; as it was, there was nothing left but a crater.

 _A shallow, cool one_ , Jazz thought as he slid down the side to the injured mech at the bottom. “Hey, you okay mech?”

The mech didn’t answer.

Wings and thrusters — this was a seeker. Jazz had seen a few over the communications while Optimus and Iacon’s envoys had been finalizing negotiations with Vos. But they weren’t supposed to be coming for seven more orns. What was a seeker doing here now?

 _Crashin’_ , his processor answered dryly as he checked the mech over. Nothing missing or broken he could see. Lots of scorching, but no fountains of gushing energon. Jazz wasn’t a medic — and he knew this mech needed one — but he looked like he’d survive being pulled out of the crater and to the temple for healing. Which was good; no medic was going to come this close to the front lines.

He released the magnets holding the handle apparatus to his shoulders and triggered the command for the lines to retract so they wouldn’t tangle before subspacing the whole thing. He winced as it stretched the limits of his subspace generator and was somewhat glad it was morning; through the night his subspace was filled with energon cubes and ammunition and anything else he was told to deliver. The kite did collapse into a surprisingly small form when folded up, but he didn’t have the time. He needed to get them off the battlefield before —

“Well… if it isn’t the troublesome little kite flyer?”

— the crash attracted anyone else.

Slowly, Jazz looked up, and up. He recognized the massive form of Megatron by the unearthly purple glow of a necromancer and the HUGE fusion cannon attached to one arm.

Jazz trembled. He’d never been this close to the Warlord before (certainly not without the safety of rooftop distance and a quick escape with his grappling hooks or kite), but he’d watched that cannon blow through both walls and mechs like they weren’t even there… Staring up at him with nothing but his scattershot blaster was even more terrifying than when he’d been caught in the center of a Decepticon-set fire, with none of the exhilaration. He triggered the transformation for the weapon anyway. He wasn’t going to die without shooting back.

Megatron aimed the cannon, energy gathered at its aperture, and Jazz prepared to move ( _keep moving_ ).

**“MEGATRON!”**

The voice was like that of an angel-spark of Primus. Megatron dismissed the newspark to face the Prime, just as the first hit of the Starsaber landed. It was followed by a burst from Optimus’ chain gun and from there devolved into a brawl only Ultra Magnus would dare interfere with.

Jazz nearly collapsed with relief; Wheeljack caught him on the way down. Next to them he saw Ironhide heft the unconscious seeker up onto his shoulder.

“Come on,” Wheeljack said fondly, exhaustion dragging at his own voice. “Let’s get you inside where you can rest.”

Behind them, the two leaders clashed and Cybertron shook with the force of it. A snatch of a Decepticon war-hymn — _crack the ground, gods of thunder_ — ran through his processor and he shuddered. For once the Decepticons had the right of it: those two weren’t just mechs, but forces of nature. Wheeljack just held him tighter as they left the battling titans behind. Overwhelmed by relief from his fear of death at Megatron’s hand, let alone the night spent running across Iacon’s rooftops, Jazz’s frame finally dragged him into unconsciousness.

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The cot in Wheeljack’s workshop was a familiar place to wake up. This was where he’d lived after he’d been released from the creche building. At that time Iacon had still been standing in its entirety and they’d needed the space to house the next planned batch of newsparks that had never actually been built. They could have stayed; there was enough space, since creches were fairly small now compared to when the building had been constructed. But newsparks couldn’t stay new forever and finding a place outside the creche had been something he’d been looking forward to. He’d already been spending more and more time with Wheeljack in the workshop learning about the mechanics of flight and how to build kites from the engineer, so it had felt natural to move in there when the cot had been offered. And there he’d stayed until he’d become Optimus’ squire and been moved to the little room just outside the Prime’s own so as to better assist him. It was one of the few spaces left that didn’t have refugees from other parts of the city residing in it — space he could keep his kites without worrying that Wheeljack’s latest project was going to damage the fragile things — but there were still things he missed about the workshop.

Previously he’d woken to the sounds of Wheeljack humming as he worked or to the sound of him picking up a thread of a story as he noticed his charge waking. The others didn’t like Wheeljack’s stories as much as Jazz did. He rarely told battle stories or racing stories or the things the others liked. Instead he told stories about people he had known, from Simfur to Kaon (which were obviously lies, but Jazz enjoyed them anyway). He also told the stories he knew Jazz would enjoy the most: travelling to the Sonic Canyons and spending vorns trying to decipher the secrets of the universe in the voices of the wind; the endless vastness of the Rust Sea and the pirate clans who were both predators and protectors of all who decided to make the sands their home. He told stories about dragons, and the long-ago knights tasked with slaying them. He spoke of those knights as friends. This time though, Wheeljack was nowhere to be heard.

That, more than anything, brought him out of recharge quickly. The cot was familiar, but the silence wasn’t.

He onlined his optics to peer into the dim space.

Wheeljack had the usual assortment of weapons and pieces, wires, gears, and glass beakers with chemicals that were expected from Iacon’s premiere weapon designer. There were also the tools and equipment he used for weapons installation onto mechs’ frames and basic, non-battle related repairs. But it was other things that caught his gaze, buried in the piles of parts and circuits. From his place on the cot he could see a cracked crystal that glowed strangely in the faint light, a can of some sort of fluid with a paintbrush half-melted into it, a pair of goggles with green glass that was like none of the rest of the safety equipment, the armor plating of some sort of mechanimal pockmarked with acid… Jazz always wondered where the mechanic got this stuff, especially considering the siege. Some things, like the three-hundred glass spheres (each a different color) he knew were hidden in a drawer, had stories behind them; most, though, Wheeljack just shrugged mysteriously and said they came from beyond the far horizon.

Jazz itched to go through those bits and pieces he’d never before glimpsed, to come up with his own stories about them, but he resisted. Wheeljack wasn’t here...which meant that whatever was going on with the crashed seeker hadn’t been resolved yet. And that meant _sneaking_.

Iacon was never quiet any longer. Battle sounds rang in the distance. The tempo had tapered off from this morning’s frenzy, both the Decepticons and the Iaconi army retreating for short rests periodically. In these lulls, Iacon’s citizens made what repairs they had time for. In these lulls, traps were set for incautious invaders and the bulk of energon harvesting from the mines beneath the city was done. Iacon was busiest during the lulls.

Wheeljack’s workshop was in the basement of the palace, so no one looked oddly at Jazz while he made his way through the corridors towards the upper levels and towers. His own room was up there, next to Optimus’, as well as the roofs, which no one had ever bothered keeping him off off. It wasn’t until he got close to the war rooms that he started actively avoiding detection... something made easier by the lack of guards. They’d long ago been reassigned from the mostly-ceremonial duty of defending the palace to the direly needed one of defending the city. The hard part was finding the right vantage point from which he could hear what was going on inside the room without being spotted by its occupants.

(This was much easier when he could get into the room before everyone else.)

Eventually he found the statue of Solus Prime set into an alcove that shared a wall with the occupied war room. He’d used it to eavesdrop before, though he preferred the windows for all his covert listening needs. He clambered up it and pressed himself into the shadows where those passing below would overlook an eavesdropper. The alcove made the wall a bit thinner and if he pressed his audial sensors up to the metal he could just make out the voices of Prime and the others within.

“—is alive.” The voice was one Jazz didn’t know at all. The seeker’s, he thought. “The trine bond assures their Excellencies of that, but if he cannot be retrieved by the next new moon a new trine will have to be chosen. Their Excellencies Thundercracker and Skywarp send their regrets that the bonding cannot take place on schedule. They’ve sent seekers to search for him, but do not have high hopes for his retrieval.”

“Iacon,” that was Prime. Jazz would recognize _that_ voice anywhere, “will not last until the new moon, much less until a new agreement can be negotiated.”

“As you say.”

Wheeljack’s response was muffled. Jazz listened hard for Ultra Magnus and Ironhide, but it seemed the two day-commanders were still dealing with Decepticon attacks.

“That may be, my friend,” Prime responded to Wheeljack’s comment, “but right now we do not have much in the way of choices. The fates of Starscream and Iacon are one right now, and the Paladins do have some historical success in the slaying of dragons.”

Another comment from Wheeljack.

“No,” said Prime, “It must be me. This is my responsibility. Megatron is just one mechanism, a Decepticon like any other. A dragon is something else entirely.” A sharp retort from Wheeljack. “Of course, I did not mean to belittle… we cannot afford to follow the traditional formula of waiting for one of the ranks to feel he is ready. This must be done now. Bring that back to your rulers in Vos, Skysight: I will retrieve their third.”

“Of course, Prime.”

“Meanwhile… our hospitality is meager, but we can spare a ration of energon and a space to recharge until tomorrow morning.”

“The Prime is generous.”

Prime must have dismissed the seeker silently, because he heard one of the three leave, met by a servant at the door.

There was a long silence between Optimus and Wheeljack inside while Jazz strained to hear whatever they were doing. They could be adjusting the holographic display in the room, taking a break for energon or just staring at each other, and it was _so frustrating_ to not know which.

Finally Optimus broke the silence. “I trust you know what we might need on such an expedition — better than I would, I’m guessing.” A vaguely affirmative sound. “Thank you. And retrieve Jazz and make sure he’ll be ready by tonight. We’ve a much better chance of leaving Iacon undetected by night. The terrorcons…” The conversation went on, but Jazz didn’t really hear any more of it. _Leaving Iacon?_ He could scarcely believe it.

Jazz had always dreamed of leaving Iacon, wandering the world and learning its wonders. This… probably wasn’t going to be anything like that, but it almost didn’t matter. He was going to be going _someplace other than Iacon_.

So caught up in his imaginings that he didn’t notice his hiding spot on top of the statue had been found until he was yanked to the ground by one foot. He yelped and flailed and on instinct his grappling hook embedded itself into the top of the alcove, but it didn’t help. He found himself on the floor of the hallway staring up at Wheeljack’s rebuking glare.

Jazz smiled anyway. “Hi.”

“Yeah,” Wheeljack muttered. “‘Hi’.”

“I was just checkin’ for dust.”

“I’m sure,” Natrium wouldn't have reacted in his vicinity, his tone was so dry. Obviously the innocent act wasn’t working on him. “What did you hear?” Nope, not fooled at all.

“Nothin’. Wall’s too thick.”

“ _Jazz_ …”

That was not a tone Jazz wanted to provoke. As a guardian, Wheeljack was pretty laid back, giving Jazz the space to experiment — whatever directions that experimentation took him. But on those few occasions he _had_ decided Jazz had overstepped and a punishment was required, the lessons had stuck. “Just somethin’ about Starscream and a dragon… Me an’ Prime, we’re really leaving Iacon?”

Wheeljack’s vocal indicators flared as he sighed. He sat down on the floor next to Jazz and the younger mech scrambled to sit up next to him. He ended up leaning against the mechanic’s side, feeling the steady _thrum_ of his larger systems right down to his struts. Quickly — much more quickly than they would have if Jazz had been as grown as he thought he was — their systems synced, energon pumping to the same rhythm and Jazz hovered on the edge of slipping back to recharge, only a programmed expectation of a story (because Wheeljack _always_ told stories when they synced like this) kept him from dimming his visor completely. Wheeljack chuckled softly; he’d helped build and teach a lot of younglings, but had never been chosen as a guardian by one of them, until Jazz.

Jazz really shouldn’t have been awake just yet, and it would be so easy just to sync him back into recharge then put him back to bed. But the dim glow of his visor was expectant and, well, newsparks couldn’t stay new.

“Starscream was taken by a dragon,” he said and Jazz’s visor brightened a bit. Prime’s upcoming bonding and the alliance with Vos was no secret, but between his position as Optimus’ squire and his tendency towards eavesdropping (sometimes literally from the eaves) he probably knew more about it — and just how much the alliance was dependent on the bonding — than the average Iaconi. “Dragons are… monstrous mechanisms, with great wings that can blot out the moon as they come down on their prey. They live in the rocks and crevasses of the moon, but descend to Cybertron to hunt and they delight in hunting us. We are their favorite prey. Many knights have given their lives fighting dragons, burning in the fires of their great flamethrowers, or melting in the acid some can spit from their gullets. Rarely, a knight has succeeded in killing a dragon, and yet they always return with the rising of the moon. And you know how Optimus is. You and he are going to rescue the fair prince...save the city.”

“Live happily ever after,” Jazz finished.

There was something unidentifiable in Wheeljack’s optics for a moment, but then he just nodded. “Yeah, kid. Happily ever after.” He hefted them both up off the ground. “But first you are going back to recharge. You’ll need it for your big adventure.”

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	3. Chapter three — Crossing the Threshold

This time is was Prime’s summons that woke him. 

This time he was in his own room. He ordered the lights on and a familiar riot of color greeted his optics. All his kites… the ones that hadn’t been destroyed by crashes and other accidents anyway.

He acknowledged the summons, in which Prime had said to “finish collecting what he was taking with him and meet down in Wheeljack’s workshop” and set to do as instructed. He carefully avoided stepping on a half-finished box kite as he got off the berth. He looked at it. He’d gotten as far as stretching the thin woven polymer over the aluminum framework, gluing it in place, but not as far as fully assembling it and both the tiers, much less painting or stringing it onto the thick plastic monofilament twine he used as kite-string. There was something extremely sad about the unpainted kite. Maybe it was the knowledge of just how long it had remained unfinished while he zipped around the city until sunrise. The amount of attention required to not step on it had been all he could spare for it since shortly after he’d become Optimus’ squire.

He looked around his room.  _ None _ of them had been out of this room since he’d moved into it.

Except the battle kite, which Wheeljack had taken the liberty of taking from Jazz’s subspace and folding up into its much more portable form. Jazz reached over to subspace it, and felt it settle into the extradimensional space much more easily this time. He turned his attention back to the other kites.

He didn’t actually think he  _ would _ have a chance to work on it; he just couldn’t bear the thought of leaving with it unfinished and he subspaced the box kite on the floor and all the things he’d need to complete it.

He wouldn’t need them, he forced himself to admit. These were just toys he’d made for pleasure. The few he’d tried to make useful in other ways — like the bright magenta colored one, a larger twin of the unfinished one, that he’d put little cameras on in order to try and scout out Decepticon positions — had all, eventually, been reduced to just novelties. Just toys. He knew the stories that were told of knights who went to kill dragons. It was exceedingly dangerous. In more stories than not, the knight died, and the squire had to carry the knight’s weapon back to Iacon… nowhere, in those stories, was there room for kites.

Still, on a whim right as he turned to report to Wheeljack’s workshop, he reached out and subspaced one he’d made a long time ago. The extremely realistic dragon kite. For luck.

And then (because Prime had just pinged his communications suite again) he decided to take his short-cut to the basement: Out the window… slide down the angled drainpipe (careful not to slip into any sludge left from the last storm!)... over the edge… catch himself on  _ that _ gargoyle. Hold there for a count of three, then drop down to the next layer of buildings....scare a servant cleaning one of the balconies...repeat. Sorta. This layer was slightly different, but he knew the route like his own sparkbeat and he sauntered into Wheeljack’s workshop less than a full breem after Prime’s ping.

Taking the stairs would have taken about two breems.

Wheeljack’s optics immediately found the smudgy scuff mark from where Jazz had slipped on a patch of greasy soot before catching himself with his grappling hook on the chimney the soot had come from, but he didn’t say anything. Jazz’s penchant for high places and daredevil stunts had started practically the day he’d been sparked. All the city was his playground.

“Wheeljack,” Prime said gently, a reminder that Jazz’s antics were not the reason they were here.

“O’course, Prime,” Wheeljack bowed slightly in acknowledgement. “I got a couple of survival packets for ya. Energon for a decaorn. First aid stuff. Ammo for both your guns… including flak ammo, to make hittin’ the critter while it’s flyin’ a bit easier.” Jazz poked the indicated ammunition, examining it. Felt the same as his normal ammo, but Wheeljack was the best. Optimus just nodded. “Climbing gear… ropes, hammers, pitons — the works. A couple of extra grappling hooks. Yours fit into your integrated launcher, Jazz, in case you have to leave one behind somewhere.”

“Thanks, Wheeljack.” It didn’t happen often, but like kites, the grappling hook did get tangled up enough that he had a quick-release to keep him from being tied down until someone came to  _ un _ tie him.

“Got your standard fire-resistant goodies: fire ward gel,”  _ like that used to fireproof buildings when the Decepticons tried setting fires _ , Jazz thought, “to keep your armor from melting, fuel stabilizers to keep your energon from reactin’ to the heat, and if you give me two shakes I’ll get a set of fire-tires on ya both. Jazz, you first. These’re a bit heavier than your usual and you’re gonna be bouncin’ around the ‘shop until you’re used to them.”

Jazz had had tires replaced a few times. It itched every time, and even if they were perfectly aligned (and Wheeljack always aligned them perfectly), they threw him off-balance for a while. He tried (very hard) not to squirm while Wheeljack changed out his tires, and then as soon as the mechanic patted his hood to indicate he was done, he moved. Jazz didn't even bother jumping down off the lift, he just transformed right there, clung to the lift for a moment, then shot his grappling hook up to grab one of the rafters. Then he proceeded to “bounce around” trying to get used to the feeling of having lead weights where his tires had been. He knew they weren’t really that heavy, but still!

Optimus rolled up onto the lift as it was lowered, then raised for Wheeljack to get at  _ his _ tires. He had more tires than Jazz, and Prime didn’t wiggle, so he continued his equipment briefing while he worked on their leader. “Here’s some acid ward gel too, but be careful. Ain’t got nothing to protect ya if acid gets under your armor, and you can’t mix it with the fire-ward. It’ll...Just don’t. You gotta pick one or the other.” Jazz hung upside-down from a (different) rafter, and noted which package was which. When  _ Wheeljack _ refused to elaborate on something bad, you  _ knew it was bad _ . He was never,  _ ever _ , going to mix the acid and fire ward gels. “Grease, in case ya get grabbed, just pop the cork and wiggle, scent neutralizer, some sneezing powder — can’t use their flamethrowers if their vents are backfiring, see? — couple of different smoke-barriers. These,” he gestured to the four smaller, blue, glass canisters, “will just fill the area around you with smoke designed to foil sensors; those,” the two red canisters, “will actually make a noxious smoke barrier between you and the sky. Neither last very long, so keep that in mind.”

The lift lowered to the ground before Optimus slid off it and transformed. Carefully he tested the new weight on his legs. “Of course. Thank you.”

They loaded everything Wheeljack had for them into their subspace. Jazz’s generator twinged, letting him know he was on the very edge of his maximum space. Wheeljack knew Jazz’s specs precisely and had left him just enough space for his battle kite and his personal items… Optimus had more gear, but he also had a larger subspace, and less of it taken up by a large kite.

Optimus gestured for Jazz to follow and he did. As they left the palace he was bombarded with the sounds of battle. The terrorcons had begun their attack and, though the lines of paladins was still at the edge of the city, he itched for his kite, to be on the rooftops, to answer each call for more ammunition or energon that pinged his communications suite. Instead, he followed on his Prime’s heels and wondered how they were going to get out of the city.

If it were just him, he’d climb to the top of the palace or temple and catch the wind on the battle kite, but Prime was much too heavy.

They approached a quartet of paladins guarding a waste-transport tunnel-grate. They saluted as they approached and one of them opened the grate. Another, Sidenet, the senior knight, said, “You’ve got three breems to get to the other side of the incinerator, Sire. After that it goes back on automatically.”

“Acknowledged,” Prime dropped down into the darkness with more grace than most would credit a mech of his size.

Jazz looked once more around Iacon, the horizon and stars, the sound battle and the flashes of gunfire. Sudden reluctance seized his spark. Iacon was all he’d ever known.

He looked down at the tunnel entrance.

It was time to fly.

Except well, not. He followed Prime, dropping down into the dark. Even had his kite been out, the sides were too close to unfold it. He would have wrecked it trying to glide down the tunnel. It also wasn’t that far. He landed next to Prime and, belatedly, turned his headlights on. They and Optimus’ illuminated the tunnel.

The  _ clunk _ of the paladins replacing the grate was very loud in this place. Jazz squeaked.

Prime met Jazz’s optics, and the little platelets drew together in sympathy. Which was  _ entirely _ unwarranted; Jazz was  _ not scared _ .

“So which way we goin’, bossmech?” Jazz drawled casually.

Optimus nodded ahead of them. “The incinerator marks the border between Iacon’s sewers and the wild caves and tunnels of Cybertron. We must hurry.”

Jazz had heard stories (mostly from Wheeljack) about how dark scary tunnels were supposed to be. Dark. Scary. Still dripping with acid from the last rain. Filled with strange lights and stranger sounds. And monsters. Tunnels always had monsters in them in Wheeljack’s stories.

After he had settled from his initial fear, the sewers under Iacon were a bit of a let-down. They weren’t in the best repair, true, but the Iaconi hadn’t had the means or time to really repair them in a while. As a result there were places where the acid had cut channels in the metal and other places where Jazz had to hop over puddles Prime’s long stride carried him over effortlessly. But overall they were silent. The only lights came from their headlights and the only sounds from their footsteps.

Even the incinerator was still and quiet. Other than the scent of scorched metal and ash, it was nothing more than a big, silent room.

Beyond it though… Optimus closed and locked the heavy, fireproofed door of the incinerator behind them while Jazz stared. Unvarnished patinas reflected his headlights back at him in every color. The walls of the cave glittered. But that wasn’t what held his gaze. The vast pool of acid that stretched from the little, obviously artificial, platform they stood on, out to the furthest walls was so clear it looked like air, the patinas and metallic deposits making whimsical little landscapes like nothing he’d ever seen before.

“S’beautiful,” Jazz whispered as he felt Optimus come up behind him, those little eddies of air creating ripples across the otherwise utterly still acid.

“I’m surprised Wheeljack never mentioned it in his stories.” Optimus didn’t whisper, and his voice echoed back at them in the silence of cave, making Jazz shiver. “It’s the reason the Decepticons have long-since given up coming through these tunnels. This is the only place where you can enter or exit Iacon from the wild caves. No mech — not even your friend Seaspray — can traverse the acid pool.”

“So how’re we gonna, bossmech?”

“Here.”

It was a raft, set to the side of the platform where Jazz had overlooked it. A gold plated platform was tied to six glass tubes filled with air, keeping the metal afloat. Four gold paddles rested on top of the otherwise flat platform. He could see there was a little switch and a tiny engine… but that was it. No rails or splash guards or anything to keep them from tipping over. Just a flat sheet of metal on a bunch of floating tubes. The whole rig didn’t look that safe.

Neither was jumping from a rooftop with a kite, he forced himself to admit.

As though he knew what his young squire was thinking, Optimus chuckled. “Now might be a good time to use some of the acid ward gel. It won’t protect you if you fall in, but it should guard our armor from incidental splashes and such.”

“Thought that stuff was for the dragons,” Jazz said, uncertain. Dragons spit acid, didn’t they?

“Perhaps, but fire is much more of a concern when fighting dragons, and we can’t use both at the same time. We’ll still have some, just in case, but I think this is a much better use for it.” Optimus’ voice was so reassuring it was almost hypnotic and Jazz found himself nodding in agreement.

It did make sense though.

So they lathered their armor with the greasy stuff, caking it into the seams and gaps as best they could, then climbed (carefully) onto the raft.

Jazz watched, hypnotized, the ripples they caused. The pattern was there, so like the wakes he knew he caused in the air when he leapt or flew through it, but he’d never seen them so clearly before. It wasn’t hard to imagine the wake of his kite in place of the gold raft, though the paddles were a bit odd to watch, because they sent weird eddies around the raft that his kite wouldn’t. Eventually they moved into a narrower, shallower channel through the metal… He saw movement and snatched the little creature from the acid before he could remind himself why that was a bad idea. Fortunately the acid just flowed off his hand without eating into the metal. It hadn’t been under the surface long enough for the acid to get past the warding gel and into the joints.

In his hand he held a little creature. Something with a wide, flattish head-shell and a segmented tail. He could feel the multitudes of tiny legs scrabbling against his fingers and little antennae waved in the air. He looked into the creature’s tiny little optic, regarded its deep blue shell and the constellations of little white spots across the larger head-plate, the delicate mechanisms tucked under the translucent shell…

“It’s a cybertriops,” Optimus said, having looked back in alarm when he heard the splash. It had just been his squire being his reckless self, but for a moment… “They live in acid pools and filter dissolved energon from the liquid. Now that you’ve caught it, what are you going to do with it?”

Gently he tipped the little cybertriops back into the acid, careful not to get any of the liquid on his hand this time. It swam away and, watching, he could see there were several others darting about, like tiny carved gemstones paddling through the acid and clinging to the eroded metal sides of the cave with their itty bitty legs.

He saw no other signs of life in the cavern, even now that he was looking for them.

Finally the passage widened again into something more lake-like, and two breems later they were running aground on the far side.

Optimus flipped the switch and pushed the raft back out into the pool. “We don’t want anyone using it to get  _ into _ Iacon. We’ll find another way back in, when we return.” Jazz watched the little motor he’d noticed before switch on and the raft automatically spin around and start heading back down the passage from which they’d come.

No turning back now.

.

.

_ These _ were the drippy, dank, slippery, dangerous caves that were always featured in Wheeljack’s stories.

He was glad Optimus hadn’t saved the acid ward gel. Acidic liquid dripped from the ceiling and coated the walls. It was impossible to avoid completely and Jazz despaired to think of what might have happened without the protective coating on their armor. In one place, it ran like a stream over a small cliff and pooled at the bottom, then flowed away, deeper into Cybertron. He even saw a what he  _ thought _ were stalactite formations, but which wiggled as he and Optimus passed and dripped acid down from the tips.

He saw more cybertriops, mostly a muddy blue color, but the occasional other color also appeared. Yellow, black, even several that he almost missed spotting entirely that were completely clear. But here in the dark, other creatures lived as well and he saw the strange sights and heard the strange sounds that had fascinated him in stories. A galaxy of little lights, created by the glowing sticky traps of thousands of little miniature digger-like creatures Optimus couldn’t name as Jazz trotted along, practically on his heels. A constant clicking, squeaking, clickity-clicking assaulted his audios, though he didn’t see any sign of the creature (or creatures) that must have been making the noise. The lights and sounds confused his senses, glimmering off of the patinaed walls and echoing great distances… he stuck close to Optimus, who seemed to know where they were going.

“We’re almost to the surface,” Optimus said quietly.

And sure enough, not a breem later they spotted the first glimmer of far-off moonlight.

At the same time, the cave opened up and Jazz saw some of the most bizarre metallic formations yet: pod-like structures. Shaped like a drop of acid and covered in smooth armor plates, he’d never heard of anything like them. They didn’t look like any other structure he’d seen in the cave so far. He wandered close for a better look.

“Don’t,” Optimus stopped him from touching the nearest one. “Those are the stasis pods of insecticons. They will wake up if they are touched.”

Jazz pulled back. Stasis pods? Sure enough as he walked around the closest, he could see the glow of red optic band like his own blue one…

Carefully they picked their way through the pods, moving towards the glimmer of moonlight they could see in the distance. The pods were clustered close together. They covered the walls, the ceiling, almost covered the floor. Each had a hint of that red glow coming from within, indicating the insecticon inside. Acid dripped sluggishly from the occasional one on the ceiling to the floor, often landing on a pod, leaving a patina behind. Jazz shuddered at the thought of being stuck in one of these things while so much could go wrong around him…

A tremor.

Jazz crouched for balance — he didn’t flail and he didn’t fall — and Optimus widened his stance for the same. They stopped, waiting. Had that woken the slumbering creatures around them?

Apparently not.

At least not until Jazz heard, in the distance, the sound of a couple of flakes of loose metal falling from somewhere above and hitting a pod with soft  _ clink _ sounds… The pods began to crack, slowly at first —

“DRIVE!” Optimus threw his squire in front of him and folded down into alt.

Jazz didn't have to be told twice. He tumbled into his car-form with all his grace and hit the gas, splashing through an acid puddle and careening off an opening pod in his haste.

He nearly stalled when the first howl filled the air. The sound scraped along his circuits like shards of glass. It was answered by a second, then a third, then more as the cavern filled with those unnatural howls. Sensitive audios were overwhelmed and spat static that leaked into his vision. He wanted to stop... He wanted to hide…

Optimus pushed his bumper and instinctively Jazz sped up to stay ahead of the much larger Prime. “Keep moving,” the knight commanded over his radio.

_ Keep moving _ , Jazz’s own mantra. He chanted it to himself.  _ Keep moving. Keep moving. _

The insecticons were a wall of sound, a wall of moving air, the buzzing of their wing-engines howling for energon. One knocked into him, digging its claws into the seams of Jazz’s armor and he tumbled out of alt to dodge. Another whooshed close, more felt by its air currents than distinguished amidst the howling, and Jazz somersaulted over it. Behind him, the sound of Prime’s own transformation and the impact of the Starsaber against insecticons was a relief against his abused audios, but Jazz didn't have time to slow or even to think. It was like the fire, there was too much sound to hear anything clearly, the world was the red lights of their optic bands and the air currents of the swarm… he tumbled and spun. He caught one with his grappling hook, yanking himself out of the jaws of another, and landed briefly on the back of a third.

_ Keep moving. _

Time disappeared.

He burst out of the cave and into true moonlight, Optimus only a klik behind him. With a battlecry, the Prime channeled his will through the sword and collapsed the tunnel entrance. Many of the insecticons were crushed or trapped. Those that weren’t quickly dispersed into the night.

For a long moment Jazz stood there, his sensors utterly confused by the lack of everything the cave had in abundance: insecticon battle-howls, moving bodies, and buzzing wings among the overhangs and walls. Silence rang louder than the howling echoes.

Everything reset  _ real fast _ though when Prime collapsed.

He fell to his knees and braced himself against the sword. “Prime!” Jazz ran to him. It was ridiculous to try and support any of the larger mech’s weight, but he tried anyway, looking up into feverish optics. “What’s wrong bossmech?” He didn’t see any obviously severe injuries. There were some punctures that bled sluggishly, but nothing that should have taken down their Prime.

“I don’t…” Optimus’ fingers went slack and the sword ceased holding up his bulk. He finished his fall, going prone on the ground despite Jazz’s attempts to catch him.

.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [An example of an insecticon screaming](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhw_qhxMhYA)   
> 


	4. Chapter four — Tests, Allies and Enemies, part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rizobact was nice enough to find the original tumblr post that inspired the cybertriops. It can be found [here.](http://rizobact.tumblr.com/post/142613431976/transparasite-bassposaune-mintpetal)

When asked later, Jazz couldn’t tell how he managed to get to Rodion.

He remembered panicking, breaking down into the click-sobs of a pre-lingual newspark calling for its caretakers, even finding his voice and calling frantically for help, both aloud and over comms, trying to reach besieged Iacon with his short-range radio… and receiving no answer. He even remembered realizing that he was completely and utterly alone with his wounded Prime, and that he had to _do something_.

What he did not remember was how he’d coaxed Optimus into alt form, where he’d found a map of the area, or towing his Prime’s bulk to the nearest town.

Rodion was technically under the control of Iacon. Long ago they’d been sister cities, Iacon acting as the seat of government and Rodion as the center for trade. Both cities were equally beautiful, equally lovely. The jewels of the Iacon Protectorate, each true rivals for the cities of Vos...

Generations of Decepticon attacks had changed that.

Now Rodion was little more than a pirate port and slum. Iacon had not been capable of supporting Rodion to prevent its descent into crime. Pirate Lords and Thief Kings ruled the city. Beggars and buymecha lined the filthy streets.

Jazz wanted to huddle into his Prime’s side, but he couldn’t. They needed to keep moving. Somewhere there was help to be found. There had to be.

“Hey shiny,” someone called from the partially collapsed entrance to an alley.

Jazz shivered. He wasn’t sure he liked that voice. That was a voice that wanted something. Still… he needed to find a medic or something for Optimus. And that meant talking to the locals. He transformed. “What’d ya want, mech?”

The mech’s red optics regarded them shrewdly. “You look like you could use a bit of help… help I might be willing to provide.” He shrugged shoulders that might have once been painted white, but were now so covered in dirt that color couldn’t be seen except in streaks and hints. “Just need a bit of a… finder’s fee. That sounds fair, yes?”

Jazz dithered. He didn’t know if he could trust this mech. He needed a medic.

Optimus was dying… that decided him. “Need a medic for m’friend here. You get us to one safe and we’ll discuss _finder’s fees_ , alright. Ain’t got nothin’ ‘cept a scatter-shot to the face ‘till m’friend’s safe.”

The gutter-mech regarded the pair, as though evaluating how serious Jazz’s threat was.

Narrowing his own visor, Jazz transformed his arm into the scattershot blaster and loudly ratcheted a pair of rounds into the firing chamber. Yes he was armed. Yes he knew how to use the weapon. He balanced on his feet, loosened his joints in preparation to _move_ …

Jazz of course couldn’t know what he looked like to the gutter-mech. He pushed the edge of being a non-combatant in Iacon. His job was to dive into the fray, but not to fight in it. He took pot-shots at terrorcons when opportunity or duty dictated, but he wasn’t a warrior. In his mind, he was lost, alone and cornered… the very opposite of dangerous.

To Drift, who’d only ever seen real weapons on the most dangerous of the pirate crews and street toughs, paired with the training to use that weapon most of those thugs lacked, Jazz was the very definition of dangerous.

“Fine,” the gutter-mech backed down, subtly flattening his dirty armor in surrender and submission. “I know a place. Follow me.”

He folded into his alt-form and Jazz followed suit, retethering himself to the unconscious Prime in the process.

The building was unremarkable among the others. It was just as rust-stained and covered in graffiti. The windows were boarded up with sheet metal and barred with thick rebar, but there was no one sleeping in the shelter of the doorway. A quick glance at the dim optics that peered out at them in a mixture of curiosity and hunger confirmed how strange this was. No other building nearby was free of vagrants.

His guide though was fearless as he went up to the door and rang the (working) chime.

“By Primus if you’re another envoy from Leadway demanding payment for ‘protection’ I am going to send you back with your waste systems wired to your transformation cog!” A mech inside practically yelled and Jazz thought he understood why everyone was avoiding squatting near this building. He rolled himself between Optimus and this new potential threat. Drift just slouched further, tilting his head in amusement as the door slid open and a fierce mech with a black chevron peered out. “What?”

“Patients for you,” the gutter-mech drawled, stepping aside so that the mech’s view of the two Iaconi was unobstructed.

The mech stalked out onto the street. Where Drift was maybe-white-under-the-dirt, this mech was definitely-white-with-occasional-grime. Red crosses adorned his shoulders — the symbols of a medic — but his stance was pure aggression. Jazz transformed to meet the mech, ready to defend Optimus from this new threat.

The mech stopped a few steps away from them though, glaring at the unconscious Prime. Jazz felt the very edge of a medical scan rebounding off Prime’s plating. “How long ago was he bitten?”

“Joor and a half,” Jazz answered. For all his aggression, this _was_ the medic he’d wanted… “Couldn’t get him here any faster.”

The mech cursed. “We need to get him inside. _Now!_ ” He barked and both Jazz and Drift hastened to obey.

A whirlwind of movement and barked commands later and Optimus was ensconced still in alt form on one of the lifts of what had turned out to be a clinic. A rather shabby and run-down clinic — the lift had audibly groaned under the Prime’s weight — but still an actual clinic, run by an actual medic who seemed to know what he was doing. Jazz sat on one of the berths nearby, humming the _Hymn to Primus_ as best he could and watched. His words hiccuped, his ventilation system backfiring with worry now that he was no longer responsible for _doing something about it_.

Ratchet muttered and cursed and snarled while he worked on the Prime, stabilizing his systems and administering the antivenin for the poison. The medic seemed completely unaware, or uncaring, of Jazz’s growing worry.

Drift, though, watched indulgently as the medic ranted and growled. But he kept glancing at Jazz whenever the squire’s vents hiccupped. That was _just_ like a frightened newspark, and with each one he forgot a bit of the wariness he’d felt when he’d first seen Jazz’s weapon. Finally he rolled his optics. He sidled over to the young mech. “About my fee,” he said flatly.

Jazz’s vents stopped hiccuping. Drift was standing and Jazz was… not, and that set off alarm bells in his processor. He could practically hear Ironhide growling at him for forgetting about the potential threat the other mech represented. Subtlely he rebalanced to tumble over the berth and take cover on the other side. “Currency’ll have to wait until your friend’s done with O—Orion,” at the last second he decided maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to announce the presence of Iacon’s Prime; the first name that came to mind was the name of one of the dragon slayers from Wheeljack’s stories, “there. He’s got all our shanix. I’ve got a few cubes, if you think that’s a fair finder’s fee.”

From the hungry way Drift eyed the slightly smaller mech, it more than was, and from the way his fingers twitched towards the shiv crudely sheathed along the plating of his back, he thought he could maybe take whatever Jazz didn’t want to give him. Jazz waited, there’d be just a second of distraction when the guttermech pulled his weapon…

“No fighting in my clinic,” Ratchet barked, making them both jump. Obviously the medic was perfectly aware of what went on in his clinic even while working on a patient. “And Drift… really. Don’t. You’re fast, and you’re a good fighter, but an Iaconi knight-in-training can be clicking like a newbuild and still able to kick your aft five times before you’ve even drawn that knife.” He inserted a fluid-drip into one open panel of Optimus’ truck form and start closing the others up. “They don’t screw around with combat training in Iacon.”

“Wasn’t gonna do nothing,” Drift sulked while Jazz scrambled to cover his surprise.

“Dunno what you’re talking about ‘mech,” he drawled.

Ratchet gave Jazz an indulgent look. “Do I look dumb to you?”

“...No?” Jazz hazarded, though he sounded far from certain that was the answer the mech wanted.

The medic just snorted in amusement as he wiped Optimus’ grease from his hands. “Good, because I remember when this place was practically Iacon’s twin. I’ve seen knights and squires before. Swords like these,” he tapped the Starsaber where it attached to Optimus’ frame and Jazz nearly leaped to the defense of the holy weapon; only Ratchet’s knowing look stopped him from _actually_ trying to defend the sword, “aren’t things you forget, are they?”

That...that was the _Starsaber_ . There was no way anyone could forget the _Sword of Primus_ … which was rather the point, wasn’t it. “Suppose not.”

“And while I would _love_ to know what a knight and his squire are doing outside Iacon after all these vorns — given the siege was still going on, last I heard — I know better than to ask about obviously confidential missions,” the medic drawled. “So that leaves the issue of payment. You owe Drift a finder’s fee and myself for a rather large collection of medical expenses. Antivenin for insecticon bites is not cheap, and your friend’s going to be here some time while he recovers. I don’t exactly have energon dripping from the rafters.” Jazz stiffened, because he really didn’t know how much shanix Optimus had brought with them… and that money was _supposed_ to be their passage to the moon.

“Told Drift. Orion has all our shanix.”

“Well then,” Ratchet smirked, “We’ll give you two a few breems _alone_.”

Jazz gave the medic a disgusted look as he practically dragged Drift from the immediate vicinity. Him and Prime…? Eww. Ewwwww. A million times _eewwwwww_.

And though he didn’t say anything, he could swear Ratchet heard him anyway because the mech laughed as he turned the corner. Pervert.

As soon as he heard the low murmur of a whispered conversation start between Ratchet and Drift though, he turned back to the Prime. “Sorry about this boss bot,” he whispered. It wasn’t really invasive to go digging through someone’s subspace if you were authorized to do so, especially if they were incapacitated, but it could still be considered a bit rude. He was authorized, which surprised him a bit, but then of all of them Prime would be the one to foresee that his squire might need something his knight had while injured. He sorted through all the stuff Wheeljack had made the larger mech take, the same equipment he’d made Jazz pack into his own subspace, until he found the box of thin strips. Shanix.

How long was Optimus going to be here, ravaged by the venom and its remedy? Ratchet had said _some time_ but that was fairly nonspecific.

What about Starscream? Iacon?

Iacon couldn’t wait while Prime lay here and recovered. They… Wheeljack and Ironhide and the rest of his creche and knights and _everyone_ … needed the reinforcements from Vos. Reinforcements that wouldn't come unless they succeeded in rescuing Starscream and returned him to Vos and went through with the bonding to Optimus… and even if Iacon itself weren’t built on quickly thinning ice that could break any breem now, there was Starscream himself. The emissary from Vos had said the seeker was alive, but for how long? In every story he’d ever been told, dragons ate mechs. They didn’t just kidnap them for no reason at all…

They had to rescue Starscream. They _had to_ . For Starscream and for Iacon, for everything Jazz had ever cared about, they… _He_ had to rescue Starscream. Him, alone.

 _Without_ Optimus.

The realization was like coming face to face with Megatron’s cannon all over again. Only this time there would be no Prime, no Wheeljack to rescue him if he faltered. He’d be operating without a safety net…

But then when had he ever used one? Couldn’t jump if you were afraid of falling.

Still feeling like he was in freefall in a fog and he didn’t know where the ground was, he unpacked Optimus’ subspace, pulling out the shanix and the energon rations, then repacking the rest. He didn’t have the room in his own subspace to take everything. Just to fit the extra energon he’d have to leave behind the unfinished kite.

That hurt, but it made a sort of sense. The shanix for Ratchet and one cube for Drift, in repayment for their help, and the kite for Optimus. A promise to return. A promise he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep, but it was the only promise he had. He couldn’t leave Optimus behind with nothing.

Even without the kite, his subspace felt over-full as he turned to follow Ratchet and Drift around the corner into the next room.

He walked straight into an argument.

_“—you?”_

_“I can take care of myself, kid.”_

_“But—!”_

Ratchet shushed Drift when the floor creaked under Jazz’s weight, and looked up to see the Iaconi watching them. “No more arguing with me, Drift,” he said firmly, and the gutter-mech sulked. “Got everything squared away?” Ratchet asked Jazz.

“Yeah,” he held out the cube of energon and the box of shanix. “Your payment, and Drift’s. It’s all we have with us.”

Drift didn’t seem to care as he snatched the cube and immediately drank it.

“Slow down,” the medic told him crankily, “You’re going to choke on it, and watching you lick it off the floor’s embarrassing.” He opened the box and counted the shanix while Drift did as he was told. “Well that’ll cover today’s treatment. You’ll be taking your knight with you then?”

Jazz stiffened. He couldn’t—! “Op— _Orion’s_ in no shape to travel.”

Something the medic damn well knew, if his smirk was anything to go by. “No he isn’t. Won’t be for about a decaorn. But this isn’t enough to cover energon and berth space for a mech that large for more than tonight. And given I’m the only qualified medic in the area, and this the only clinic, my time and attention for playing nursebot is limited.”

Getting more shanix was impossible. He could leave some of the energon to offset that cost… maybe all of it, if Ratchet was willing to take it? He didn’t know what he’d eat on the rest of the journey then, but he’d think of something…

“Or…” Ratchet’s voice was cajoling and it immediately set Jazz’s hackles up. But he paid attention, because he was desperate enough that he’d at least consider whatever alternative the medic was going to offer, “I’ll consider us even if you take Drift with you, wherever you’re going.”

“What?!” “Ratchet—!”

The medic grinned. “See? You two are getting along splendidly already.” Then more seriously. “I know better than to ask, but whatever drew you out of Iacon isn’t something you’re going to abandon because your Knight is down for the count. You have that look in your optics. _Whatever’s_ brought you here, you’re going to need a guide around the city, and someone to watch your back. Drift’s the best knife-fighter in Rodion that’s not affiliated with a gang… and you’re not going to find a better guide.”

All things Jazz kind of agreed with, but he stubbornly stayed silent.

That didn’t deter Ratchet at all. Instead he stepped to the side to address the gutter-mech. “I’ve been looking out for you practically since you came out of the Well, Little-bit, and I _know_ you were meant for greater things than this — things I can’t give you.” Jazz looked away politely, while Ratchet stroked over Drift’s tapered helm-pieces. It reminded him too much of Wheeljack. It wasn’t a comfortable association and his spark churned with witnessing it. “The best I can give you now is a chance. This chance. Please Drift...” Drift said nothing, but Jazz could hear his vents stutter. “When you’re done with the mission, whatever it is, he’ll take you back to Iacon, where you can learn to use a sword, right? What you’ve always wanted?” Jazz’s spark clenched.

“Not if it means leaving you behind, Ratch.”

“You can’t stay here forever, Drift. Newsparks can’t stay new...” whatever else the medic might have said, Jazz didn’t hear. He turned and stalked back to Optimus’ side. If he was taking a second person with him, there were a few things he still needed from the Prime’s subspace.

By the time Drift and Ratchet returned to the room with the sleeping Prime Jazz was on the bed next to him, humming a much stronger and surer version of the _Hail to Dawn_ than his stuttered attempt at a hymn earlier. He honestly didn’t know how much Optimus could hear, but figured if he could, then “We’re safe, time to rest” was what he needed to hear. He painted the kite while he did so, tracing intricate cybertriops designs and filling in the space around them with bright stars.

He looked up and Ratchet’s subdued triumph and Drift’s sullen acceptance was all he needed to see. “Tell me your short-range comms are functional.”

Drift glared; Ratchet answered for him. “They are. I’ll even check them over before the two of you leave.”

There was one worry dealt with. Long-range communication systems were bulky and expensive, but most mechs had short range ones, which were usually good enough if you were in the same city as the mech you were calling. Jazz couldn’t call Iacon with his, but he’d be able to find Drift again if they got separated. The other major issue was, “How much room you got in your subspace?”

The guttermech just glared. “Ain’t got one.”

“Lovely,” Jazz muttered. This was going to be fun. He dismissed the idea of taking Prime’s climbing gear and first aid kit. (Lucky he still had his own.) The energon was more important. He stood and sauntered over to Drift, careful to make sure his step held a bit of his usual bounce in it, and silently passed over the three things that they needed to have, no matter what. “Stash those someplace you won’t lose them, then. Careful not to break them. We’re going to need them. And don’t mix those two. At all. Ever.”

Some of the sullen fell away from the guttermech. “What are they?”

“Acid ward gel,” Jazz pointed to the mostly empty container, then to the others. “Fire ward gel, and fuel stabilizers to keep your lines from explodin’. Your tires’re going to be a lost cause, I’m afraid.” Even if Ratchet might have been willing to switch them out, there was no way either of them was using Prime’s tires, and it didn’t look like Jazz and Drift’s were the sames size either. “Try not to scream too loud when they go,” he said cheerfully. “Hurts like scrap.” Something Jazz knew from driving over Decepticon caltrops dropped to catch the Iacon runners before he and his battle kite had taken to the rooftops permanently. He looked at Ratchet as Drift winced. “Still think he should come with?”

Ratchet was looking at Drift. “Yeah. I do. You’ll do great… you’re going to _be_ great.”

“Sure.”

The medic _harumphed_. “Stay the rest of the day and recharge?” He was talking to Drift, primarily, but, “Both of you. Wherever you’re going, it’ll be easier to get there rested than not.”

Jazz itched to set out, to _move_ , but he forced himself to think about it. He’s been up almost a full orn now, running off of mostly panic. Moonset had already come and gone while Optimus was being repaired, and they only had a couple of joors before the moon rose again. Combat high was going to crash soon. He didn’t know quite why it hadn’t already, but when it did, he’d prefer to be in a berth, not huddling in a doorway on the street.

Almost as though the thoughts had flipped a switch, the need to recharge started tugging at his mind, like finally hearing _Hail to Dawn_ from the temple speakers and coming in after a night of running around and over terrorcons… Ratchet saw and smirked. “You can sleep there, if you want. Keep watch over your knight as long as you can. Drift, you know where your room is. And _I’ve_ got other patients.”

There was just one more thing, before he could sleep though. He set the half-painted kite down next to Optimus’ lift, and met Ratchet’s optics as he did so. The cranky medic, about to follow Drift out of the room, stopped and looked at the kite with an expression of understanding.

Didn’t matter what the medic thought he understood, it needed to be said. “Tell him I’ll catch up with him in Vos.”

.

.

“So where’re the docks in this place?”

Drift scowled. Apparently moonrise was not when native Rodions woke up on nights where they actually had a decent berth to sleep in. His armor ruffled, still dirty, even though Ratchet had attacked him with a scrub brush and a bucket of wound cleanser right after Jazz had woken up and started pestering him that they needed to leave soon. It wasn’t a proper wash rack and chamois-buff with his creche around him and Wheeljack making sure there wasn’t any dirt or debris in the gaps he couldn’t reach himself, but he’d taken advantage of the scrub brush too, while Drift had wiggled and squirmed and tried to escape Ratchet’s mostly futile attempts to get him clean.

The now definately-white-beneath-the-dirt mech went from ruffling to bristling his armor in irritation at Jazz when the squire didn’t stop _bouncing_ , but didn’t actually say exactly where the squire could stick his cheerfulness. “This way.”

He led the way between two buildings, and Jazz’s armor itched. It was like being watched by a Decepticon sniper. “Wait…” He tried to stop them and tell Drift they needed to take a different path.

Too late.

A half a dozen mechs materialized out of the shadows, stepping out of doorways and closing in around them from behind various corners… Jazz hissed as Drift went for his shiv.

One, a faded black and dirty yellow helicopter-alt that was obviously the leader, if only because he was the only one whose colors weren’t dirt and more dirt, stepped forward. Well, the colors and the fact that he was the one who stepped forward like a target. _And_ he spoke like he was trying to imitate a high-class Iaconi accent… at which he failed. Miserably. “You have _considered_ our offer, I assume. You know that _old_ medic cannot protect you _forever_.”

“Answer’s still no,” Drift growled. “Ain’t got nothing more to say.”

“Do not be like _that_ , Drift. Whatever your… current hang up is, I am sure we can come up with some mutually _beneficial_ terms of employment.”

“Mech said no,” Jazz spoke up. He didn’t particularly like Drift, or the fact that he was along for the ride, but he wasn’t going to just stand by while he was harassed. Besides, Jazz’s aft was in this trap too. “Out of the way. We got places to be.”

The helicopter looked at Drift’s companion for the first time, taking in the still-shiny armor and the balanced fighting stance. And his tiny racing frame. “Drift! Why do you not _introduce_ us to your… _friend_.”

“Ain’t my friend,” Drift said huffily. “Jazz’s my new boss. That’s Halo,” he pointed to the helicopter, “Boot,” who looked like he might have been designed by someone who wanted to build a seeker but had never actually seen one in real life. “Sapwood,” who may or may not have been a tank. Maybe. “Sierra,” who had kibble that reminded Jazz a bit of Seaspray, back in Iacon. Some kind of boat. “Goa and Ash,” the two thugs who’d closed the trap behind them, who were probably cars but Jazz couldn’t really tell since neither had tires at all. “They’re part of Leadway’s gang.”

“Lovely,” Jazz muttered. A gang-fight was _just_ what he needed to make his night complete. At least they weren’t Decepticons. Posers had nothing on those scary fraggers. “We still got places to be, so if these _gentlemechs’ll_ just let us be on our way…”

No such luck. “Drift’s new boss, hmm?” Halo exchanged a look with Boot. “I did not know the kid took _orders_ from anyone but the cranky old medic. Who do _you_ work for? Apyrexy? Badger? If it is Spoondrift there is _going_ to be a war...”

“Ain’t work for no one. Now _out of my way_.” Jazz took an aggressive step forward, aware of how not-intimidating his light racing-car frame had to be to a helicopter, even one without Decepticon armor and weapons. But he did know how to fight. And these fraggers didn’t; he could practically hear Ironhide scolding them for each mistake and gap in their stances… this was different than confronting Drift with an injured Optimus in tow. Drift could take care of himself, and so could Jazz.

Halo was predictably not really intimidated, and he definitely didn’t take a step back to keep the distance between himself and the shiny little grounder. “Rude. Someone _needs_ to teach you some _manners_.” He started to pull his weapon from its sheath, to beat those manners into him personally, while his cronies nodded and jeered. Overconfident, he did it slowly, for theatrics.

Jazz’s transformation from hand to taser was faster, and not theatrical at all.

_Zap-crack!_

Halo went down in a twitching pile of sparks and limbs.

Boot seemed stunned for a moment, and then he yelled, “Get them!” and the whole situation devolved into a brawl.

Nothing at all like dodging Decepticons. These amateurs didn’t have a single ranged weapon between them. Jazz danced away from Boot’s lunge and scored a taser hit on him as well. Sapwood was even slower and took two shots from the scattershot blaster before going down in a heap. Ash joined the pile, courtesy of Drift’s shiv, while Goa and Sierra decided that they’d signed up for dogpiling on a single mech armed with a knife, not fighting a maniac with an actual weapon, and fled.

Drift looked over Jazz’s pile of downed thugs, impressed, and Jazz just grinned. “Docks? Something tells me both of us would kinda like to blow this town.”

Slowly, Drift smiled back.

.

.

Halo and Boot had the worst hangovers ever when they woke up. They and Goa and Sierra stumbled into Leadway’s bar. They collapsed into a spot at the nearest table that opened up, its former occupants wanting nothing to do with them. If Leadway’s bar had ever had a name, it had long been forgotten. Located on a street sometimes called Assassin’s Chase, it stood in the shadow of the burned-out ruins of a building rumor said had exploded shortly after its owner had refused to sell to Leadway. Only a few crude tables and benches filled the space where Leadway’s “friends” and “employees” nursed their drinks. Other gangmembers laughed and snickered, even as they cleared out of the blast radius of the dejected group. _They_ knew who Halo had been sent after, and it was hilarious to watch them stumble back minus two of their number…

The femme serving tables sauntered up and looked down at them. The four of them watched her nervously. “Not sure you four deserve something to drink.”

Halo groaned and flinched away from the femme. “Wasn’t our fault.”

She leaned into the lieutenant’s personal space, and he leaned away from her more, almost cringing. Scratch that… he _was_ cringing. “Heard that before. I’ll give you exactly two kliks to make your excuses before I have you dragged out back.”

“He wasn’t alone!” Halo yelped. “He had another bot with him. Jace...Jazz! Black and white. Really shiny. He tased me and Goa and Sierra and he had some sort of blaster too!”

Leadway just looked bored. “Time’s up.” She gestured to another pair of lurking thugs, who stepped forward to do the aforementioned dragging.

“Excuse me,” another voice cut in, smooth as oiled enamel. Pristinely green and bristling with mods and weapons, he wasn’t this bar’s usual sort of patron, but an acquaintance of Leadway’s. “But for ninety shanix, could you hold off on executing them for two breems?”

The femme raised her hand and the two giant tank-alts halted. Halo looked like he couldn’t decide between relieved and even more worried. “For two-fifty you can just plain have them. Kill them, or not… I don’t care.”

“Fair enough.” The mech counted out two-hundred and fifty shanix and stalked over to the table to hand it over.

Leadway grinned. “Pleasure doing business with you, Lockdown.”

Lockdown nodded back. “As always.” He pulled over a chair and sat in it, blocking the four former gang members from the door and any chance of a quick escape. His was the only cube of energon at the table and he sipped almost daintily at it. “Now… Tell me all about this very shiny black and white mech named Jazz…”

.

.

.


	5. Chapter five — Tests, Allies and Enemies, part 2

“You would not believe how long it took me to find you two.” Jazz froze, and Drift stopped too after a realizing that Jazz was no longer following him. Kaonex accent, unmistakably the same as the voices that had heckled and threatened as he raced around the edges of combat. The squire slowly turned, hoping he wasn’t going to see what he thought he was about to see. 

No such luck.

Dark green and black plating, vicious shoulder-spikes, flat red optics… and a purple brand on his chest. Drift looked at the big mech and didn’t see what had his new ‘employer’ scared stiff. He was big and scary sure, but they’d taken on six gang members...

“‘The docks’ is so nonspecific,” the Decepticon continued, taking a step forward. “Especially in this town.”

_ “Drift, run.” _ Jazz hissed over his comms. He held his ground, but only barely. It took willpower to do so, but he had to, until Drift was gone, else the Decepticon would just kill him too.

_ “Jazz,” _ his voice was questioning. He didn’t see how one mech was such a big deal.

_ “That’s a Decepticon. Could maybe tase him, but just as likely he’ll kill us first. So fragging run already!” _

“Telling your little friend to run?” the Decepticon crooned. “Doesn’t matter to me. All I care about is you… and Prime.”

_ “Primusdamnit Drift! RUN!” _

That got the other mech moving. He transformed and took off down the street and Jazz waited for him to be out of sight before answering the ‘Con. “Maybe I’ll tell you where Prime is… You gotta do just one thing for me first.”

“Hmmm…” The Decepticon fiddled with the large hook he had instead of a right hand. “I can see why you wanted your partner gone before you struck a deal. So I’ll bite, what’s this favor you want me to do in return for selling out your beloved leader?”

Jazz smirked. “Catch me,” and then he was on four wheels, driving a different direction through the chaos of an active construction zone.

He heard the mech snarl and his massive engine growl as he took off in pursuit

This wasn’t Iacon. He needed to find a way up onto the roofs. Meanwhile he swerved around a bulldozer and under a crane-former’s load of I-beams and laughed high and excited already when he heard the larger Decepticon crash into them and swear loudly.

The construction site blended into the shanty town it was replacing, and Jazz ducked into the twisting maze of sheet metal and precariously balanced tarps. He transformed, threading his way through the narrow streets. He winced as the ‘Con barreled through a hovel, destroying it in his efforts to catch Jazz. He walked faster, until he found a building. Automatically he checked. No way onto the roof, but he scaled his way up to the open window anyway and ducked inside right as the Decepticon's first shot grazed his leg.

"Frag," he cursed. He didn't have time right now to stop and bandage that, and until it stopped bleeding it'd be Primus damn hard to lose the ‘Con on his tail. Two more shots had him scrambling for cover, and the sound of a grappling hook hitting the windowsill had him scrambling through the building and down the wall on the other side.

An alleyway. He peeked out onto the street. Not a lick of cover for a good long while, Jazz saw, and headed deeper into the alley instead. The ‘Con hit the ground with a heavy  _ thud! _ behind him as Jazz turned the corner.

The path was blocked up ahead. Crates and debris piled across the road, making it impassible. Another might have cursed his luck; Jazz praised Primus. One... two... leap! He landed lightly on top of the stack, then leapt again, grabbing the nearest hand-hold on the wall.

Two more shots rang out and Jazz had scrambled most of the way up the wall before he realized the handholds he was using were spikes. What the frag were they doing here!?!?

Didn't matter, really. All that mattered was that he keep dodging the ‘Con's shooting at him. Fragger seemed hesitant to throw himself at the spiked wall and —  _ Frag! _

The roar of a jet pack firing had Jazz throwing himself under the ‘Con and down the steep roof on the other side of the wall.

Don't fall. Don't fall. Don'tfalldon'tfalldon'tfall...

Blindly he reached out and snagged a drainpipe as he ran out of roof.

It creaked under his weight, rivets giving way and the whole thing came away from the wall in a shower of sparks. He clung to it as it fell out, until it stabilized, bent at a thirty degree angle that left him hanging out over a long drop.

The ‘Con, standing on the edge of the roof, chuckled. "Nowhere left to run, little squire."

"Mech," Jazz said brazenly, like he wasn't clinging precariously over a fatal fall with one leg that already really,  _ really _ hurt. "You don't know a thing about where I can run."

And he pushed away from the pipe, flipping mid air and shooting his grappling hook out to snag another nearby roof. He'd run across it and leapt to the next almost before the 'Con had reacted, firing up that jetpack for a second time. The next gap he jumped down, ducking under a strafing run in time to avoid anything more serious than a singed shoulder. No room to run, he clung to a windowsill for a moment before vaulting back up and taking off in a new direction, forcing the ‘Con flying on his jetpack into taking a wide loop to follow.

It wasn't Iacon. (He didn’t have his kite out.) He was already lost. None of that mattered as much a just  _ moving _ .  _ Keep moving _ . He ducked under an overhang and found himself on a sort of rooftop "road". The ‘Con landed behind him with a curse, and Jazz laughed again as the supports shoring up this section of "highway" collapsed under his feet.

He didn't stop. He dashed across a plank and kicked it out from behind him. Mech still had that jetpack, but using it in here would be asking to get flung straight into wall, so, hopefully, that would slow him down some.

Another twist, another turn, another tumble down a too-steep roof, only this time he tumbled straight through the rusted rafters himself, crashing through the top floor and landing hard on the next. Ow... ow... ow ow...

Painful as pain was, the crash sounded all sorts of lucky. As the dust settled, he heard the ‘Con jet-pack over the hole he’d fallen into without even glancing inside. Jazz pried himself up off the floor and limped down the stairs to the street.

Quite a bit less shiny from his mad scramble through the city, he managed to blend into the crowd passably well, hiding in the one place he figured the 'Con by now thought he'd never stay for long — the ground.

_ “Drift,” _ he called, hoping the other would answer and that the 'Con wasn’t listening closely enough to find him...

The guttermech was still in the docks area. Which was good, since Jazz didn’t have a single clue where he was, and he needed the local to give him directions back to the ships and their moors. When he got there, Jazz slipped into the alley Drift directed him to and the guttermech stepped out from where he’d hidden himself behind a trash bin with a deeply unconscious homeless mech under a tarp.

Drift's optics were wide as he visually checked Jazz over, taking in every scratch and smudge. "Do I want to ask about the other guy?"

"Alive," Jazz said shortly. He'd shot — even tased — Decepticons before, but always when cornered, or if he managed to surprise them. Or when something else hit them first. He wasn't a knight. "I only lost him, but he'll be looking for us again."

As though on cue, the 'Con's voice rang out over the docks. "JA~AZZ!" The bystanders turned to look at the source of the voice as Jazz froze. Drift looked to Jazz, then towards the voice and hooked his arm through his companion's. Casually he maneuvered them into a nearby doorway, out of sight. "We can play hide and seek for a while, but eventually I'm going to find you! You are going to  _ regret _ running from me."

"That doesn't make me wanna come out," Drift muttered and Jazz barked out a slightly hysterical laugh.

"Agreed. And if we stay here in town he's gonna find us. And he's gonna notice I'm running around alone and figure it's because my knight's down for the count and start looking for where I might've stashed him."

"Ratchet won't give your friend away," Drift was confident of this.

Jazz wasn't as sure, but he had to admit that Ratchet wasn't the mercenary doctor he'd seemed when he'd first demanded  _ payment _ for Optimus' treatment. He had a spark in there. Jazz just wasn't as sure there was any room in that spark for anyone but Drift. Still, "Didn't say he would, but when Bounty-Butt starts asking where I might've left someone who's sick or injured, others're gonna point to the clinic."

That turned the Rodion native's expression grim. "So what do we do?"

"Leave." This Jazz was sure of. They needed to get out of Rodion anyway, keep on going, headed towards the moon. No bounty hunter would chase them  _ that _ far. "And make a show of doing so, so he don't hang around here looking for us."

"We can't purchase passage without shanix, and no ship's gonna hire us on with a bounty hunter chasing us."

"I'd prefer hiring on, but if it ain't an option, it ain't an option. We need different plan." Jazz thought. If they couldn't purchase passage or hire on, there really was only one other option. "Find a ship that's close to leaving, get aboard and hide, then comm me with the details when they're in the process of shoving off."

"What are you going to do?"

Jazz shivered. This wasn't Iacon. There were no armymechs, no knights, not even any other runners... but there was a Decepticon. It was almost unfair. "Gonna make a scene, mech."

.

.

Nothing caught a Decepticon’s attention like someone trying to be sneaky, but Rodion was full of sneaks, so that helped. Jazz, also, was a pretty good sneak, but this  _ wasn’t Iacon _ , and that didn’t help at all.

The 'Con was between Jazz's hidden alleyway and the ship Drift found for them. He peered out of the alley, trying to find the best way around the bounty hunter. For his part, the huge green mech had stopped yelling threats and was stalking the streets, searching for the prey he thought might have come back to the docks after losing him on the chase. If Jazz didn't move, he'd be found soon, anyway.

Trying for casual, he slipped out of the alley and transformed, joining the traffic of sailors and dockworkers, thieves and prostitutes, thugs, gang members and pirates, and who knew what else, who all had business here on the docks.

Casual... casual.. casualcasual _ casual _ ... carefully he slid into the Decepticon's line of sight, blending into the traffic and inching his way past at the glacial pace of the crowded street.

He heard the familiar sound of a Decepticon plasma cannon charging and with a tumble of transforming limbs he was out of traffic and over a load of crates waiting to be loaded. He laughed, high and loud, the excitement of another chase already thrumming through his wires. He ran. Behind him the 'Con tried blasting through the crates to pursue, but ended up running around them when their heavy cargos did  _ not _ simply fly apart and turn to rubble.

Up, over, down, around... this time Jazz knew where he was going, if not precisely how he was getting there. He'd thought, this time, about having his kite out to help, but he'd need both hands free for sneaking aboard the ship, and with everything else currently in his subspace, it wouldn't fit unless it was folded up again, so he didn't. Again he relied solely on his grappling hook to keep him ahead of the Decepticon and from falling to the hard, unforgiving ground.

His leg ached, despite the first aid patch from his subspace, and he couldn't slow or pause or anything without risking the bounty hunter getting another shot off, one that could be more debilitating.

Finally he saw Drift, the ship he clung to the outer hull of laboriously pulling away from the dock. Goal in sight, he managed a burst of speed, shooting his grappling hook out. He felt it  _ ker-thunk! _ against the hull next to Drift. He launched from the dock and reeled himself in. Drift caught and held him, and he looked back at the 'Con.

He was chasing them with his jet-pack, but the boat was accelerating, lifting up into the sky, and he pointed his hook-shaped hand at Jazz and fired his own grappling hook.

Jazz shot back, tangling his hook with their pursuer’s and as the lines grew taut he saw the look of triumph on the bounty-hunter's distant face. It didn't last long; Jazz quick-released his line from his arm, and both hooks fell away into the air... leaving one very frustrated bounty hunter behind.

.

.

Drift pried open the ship’s porthole while Jazz kept watch that no one was glancing over the side while the other mech worked. Air was heating up and they were lifting higher and higher, which meant they were exiting Cybertron’s atmosphere. Good thing, on one hand, because it meant their near-random selection of a ship to stow away on was still bringing them closer to their final destination — the moon — but on the other, it meant that they were headed for either one of Cybertron’s space stations or one of the many rumored pirate coves in Cybertron’s rings. Getting passage to the moon from  _ either _ of those would be near impossible.

Jazz tried not to think about that. That thought could wait until they were inside and  _ not _ in danger of burning up on the hull of the ship while it accelerated to escape Cybertron’s gravity.

He saw the great billows of solar sails unfurl, growing taught as they filled. Fire geysered from the great engine as it ignited. They were about to accelerate. “Dri~ft…”

“Almost,” the other mech said absently as he fiddled with the lock. “It’s always harder when they’ve been locked from the insid— got it!” The porthole swung open and the two stowaways scrambled inside.

Immediately the smell of stale energon and suffering assaulted his senses.

Jazz’s vents backfired quietly, trying to clear, but Drift took it in stride, taking a closer look at the cargo surrounding them. “Energon, mostly. That’d be for the crew,” he whispered quietly as Jazz recovered and filtered out the smell. “Manacles, chains, stasis cuffs,” he went on. “Slavers’ ship. If they’ve got any of that sort of cargo, it’ll be either on the lower deck or the upper one, where they can be put to work.”

The Iaconi stiffened. “You mean people actually  _ do that _ to other people.”

Drift shrugged, a practiced casual move. “Ain’t right, but there ain’t anything we can do about it. We need to find a place to hide until they’re docked again.”

Jazz agreed, but instead he turned and watched the firestorm outside the porthole.

Cybertron’s atmosphere glowed against the glass, hotter (if Wheeljack’s stories were to be believed) than even dragon’s fire. Air ionized and burned, flaring and dancing along the window. Like reaching out and touching the sun, and he hummed a few notes of the  _ Hail to Dawn _ quietly. The great engines roared against his feet and vibrated against his hand in counterpoint.

The fire flared and sputtered as they left the atmosphere. The engines quieted to a throaty purr and the ship drifted through space. Jazz turned away to see what Drift was doing.

He was still going through the cargo crates. He looked up to meet Jazz’s optics. “Spice-metals, crystal knick-knacks, and weapons, so far. We don’t want to be caught here.”

Jazz shook away the melancholy mood the fire had left him in. “No. Can you get up to the rafters? Ain’t a lot of mechs that look up, ‘less they’re given a reason to.”

Drift needed a boost up, but he made it up to the rafters.

Lurking in the deep shadows like a pair of gargoyles, they shared a cube of energon, and Jazz took the time to clean and re-patch the wound on his leg. It didn’t look like it was getting infected, which was good, because the last thing he needed was a case of wound-rust to complicate things. He wanted one of the medics in Iacon to look at it. No one had more experience with the effects of Decepticon weapons. But it was impossible so he did his best. When he was done with that he retrieved one of his extra grappling hooks (thank you Wheeljack… you’re the best ever) and snapped it into place, attaching the cord to the quick-release mechanism. Then he reloaded his scattershot. Drift, who hadn’t been shot and had only his shiv, watched. He opened his mouth to ask something, but was interrupted by a door nearby slamming open and closed, the noise followed by a mech cackling.

Both the stowaways froze, watching as the helicopter-alt made his way between the stacks of cargo crates and disappeared down another staircase, going deeper in the ship.

Someone screeched, followed by the pirate’s cackling, and Drift latched his fingers into a gap in Jazz’s armor before the knight-in-training could dart down there to help whoever-it-was. “We can’t get caught here,” he whispered as his captive trembled.

And it was a good thing he did, because the helicopter-alt was followed, as the screeching (outraged, not pained, Jazz managed to comfort himself) continued, by another slaver, this one a blocky green car-alt. “Vortex!” he snarled as he flung the same door open and stomped inside, “Will you quit that racket! And leave —” The rest of what he might have said was lost as the door slammed shut behind him.

Jazz trembled. This was bad. This was… the knights may have been too concerned with Iacon’s fate for far too long, but he knew their tenets as well as any squire should. Standing by while the two pirates did whatever to their captive made his energon lines burn in anger and loathing. But Drift was right. There was nothing they could do. They couldn’t get caught here.

It was only a minute later that the two pirates left, the car-alt stomping angrily and the helicopter following, catcalling after him “... oars with the others; get some use out of it.”

“What part of  _ valuable _ did you not —?” the car snarled back, the rest of the sentence lost as the door back to the upper deck slammed closed.

Drift sighed in relief and slowly let go of his companion’s armor. Jazz still quivered, but he was holding himself back now. And he was focused on the door down.

It was open, just a crack.

He scrambled down the wall to investigate, Drift following clumsily. “What —?”

“Ain’t any harm in investigating,” Jazz assured with a confidence he didn’t quite feel. In fact there were probably hundreds of ways this could go badly.

“And if the slavers come back?” That was just one of them.

Still, he waved it off. “Just taking a look around.” He eased the door open, peeking in.

It was… Iacon had a prison, technically. Now it was a pile of rubble and circuitry, the forcefields long-deactivated by the same artillery strike that had levelled the building, but Jazz had seen it once before the Decepticons had come back. It had been empty, but that’s still what this room looked like: a prison, with four cells. Only one had anyone in it, and Jazz supposed that was a good thing.

The helicopter inside looked up and met Jazz’s optics.

He puffed his armor aggressively and the squire  _ shushed _ him as he sneakily moved into the room. Drift made a frustrated noise, but obligingly set up a watch, in case the pirates came back.

On a second look, this room wasn’t like the Iacon prison at all. That had been clean, and if not comfortable, not particularly uncomfortable either. And if the cells were small, it was because their residents weren’t meant to be there very long. This was dank and dark and so small the helicopter had trouble standing up fully. There was no berth. No acid dripped from the ceiling (like the caves), but there were streaks of rust on the walls. Water. Jazz boggled a bit at the thought. He knew that Cybertron’s rings and space stations had issues with water more than acid, but it was still weird.

“Stowaways,” the helicopter said quietly, but harshly. “You picked a bad ship.”

“Yeah,” Jazz answered, even more softly. “We’re figuring that out. What’s your story?”

The helicopter drew up as far as he could inside the cage. “Protectobot Blades, out of Simfur. Captured during rescue operations on the Rust Sea. These... barbarians wish to ransom me back to my unit in order to lure them into a trap.”

“Simfur… to the Rust Sea? Kinda far from home there.” Blades just set his mouth to a stubborn line and Jazz shrugged. He wasn’t exactly willing to talk about his reasons for being far from home either. Protectobots were probably as much a pirate crew as these guys, but the word ‘rescue’ had been so automatic it probably wasn’t a lie.  _ Not _ slavers. “Whatever. I’m Jazz, and that’s Drift. We’re most recently out of Rodion and had to catch a ship in a bit of a hurry, but it seems this fine vessel isn’t gonna take us close enough to our final destination to be at all suitable long-term. Also, the accommodations look like complete slag.”

“If you’re caught, you won’t be put down here with me. You’ll be rowing, if you're lucky. If you’re unlucky, you’ll be Vortex’ playthings.”

If the helicopter was trying to freak him out… it was succeeding. Jazz shivered. “Well,” he answered after a moment, “seems like it might be in both our interests that the fine and upstanding crew of this marvelous vessel not find out we’re here, ain’t it?”

Blades narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Before I say yes or no, let me be clear. You’re offering to break me out of here in return for a lift to your ‘final destination’... and we both keep quiet about this until you do, because you’re planning on fragging over the Combaticons in the process.”

_ “Are you crazy?” _ Drift hissed from the doorway. Blades’ optics flicked over to him, then back to Jazz as he chuckled.

“Probably,” Jazz said. Blades looked like he agreed, but also eager. He was probably a bit crazy himself. “You wanna tell us more about what we’re up against?”

.

.

The ship was called the  _ Devil’s Storm _ .

Turned out Drift could open the cell door, just fine, but Blades was too big to crawl out through the portholes so they were going to have to make a break for it on the upper decks. And the Combaticons (that was what this crew called themselves) had two flying alts among them: the helicopter Jazz and Drift had seen earlier, named Vortex, and a spacecraft alt named Blast Off. And the captain, Onslaught, was an anti-aircraft truck. If they were spotted — and there was no way they wouldn’t be, once they set foot on the upper deck — there was no way Blades was flying away scot free.

Unless the Combaticons were  _ distracted _ .

Which worked well for Jazz, because he didn’t really want to leave this ship behind with all its slaves, headed to… wherever the  _ Devil’s Storm _ was ultimately headed. There was no way Jazz could take them all with just Blades as a transport, but he figured that a hundred slaves making their bids for freedom would be just the sort of distraction that would keep the Combaticons from following the escapees. With any luck, they’d take the ship and figure out things from there, but all Jazz could give was a chance.

If he didn’t get himself killed trying.

He took a deep in-vent, feeling the near-vacuum burn at his cooling system, then let it out slowly in a breath of steam that turned to a plume of ice, and reminded himself that it wasn’t really any different than doing the same thing in Iacon. True, the crew would probably be shooting at him (terrorcons didn’t even notice him), but so had that bounty hunter and  _ this _ time he’d have his kite. He clung to the outer hull of the ship, keeping the kite flat against the metal so its weight and momentum wouldn’t drag him up and away before it was time, and waited for Drift’s signal.

Finally!

He launched his grappling hook up towards the upper deck, felt it catch, and let the kite catch the draft created by the solar sails. Pulled by the momentum of the ship, it dragged at him as he reeled himself in. He floated into view to a chorus of shouts, reeled in his grappling hook and launched it again, working his way up into the rigging. There he danced.

If there was one thing his kites had always done, it was grab attention. Shouts were followed by shots, the helicopter and the shuttle both tried maneuvering in close, but the rigging was just the sort of close quarters that favored his brand of acrobatics rather than true flight, and neither succeeded in catching him. The helicopter miscalculated a burst from his jetpack and got tangled coming too close and had to slice himself free with his rotors. Delicate solar sails shredded around him as they tried shooting the intruder down, but his movement was erratic and the kite very distracting.

Below, Drift went from row to row, unlocking the chains that kept the slaves subdued while Blades stood guard. Jazz couldn’t stand and watch details, but he let out a  _ whoop! _ when, while Blades kept Brawl from attacking the much more delicate streetmech, Drift viciously shoved his shiv through Swindle’s knee-joint.

The slaves didn’t need to be told what to do. Onslaught, Swindle and Brawl were dogpiled by desperate groundframes and airframes too weak to abandon the ship. Blast Off abandoned the kite-flying maniac to help his crew, leaving only Vortex.

A very surprised Vortex, when Blades took advantage of the pirate’s distraction to put a bayonet from the hold below through his rotor assembly. The pirate fell to the ship’s deck, where he was mobbed by now-free slaves.

Jazz pushed himself away from the rigging, snagged his kite as he floated past, and soared into open space. A minute later Blades offered a landing skid to the squire, Drift leaning out of the helicopter’s passenger compartment to watch. Jazz clung there, holding the kite (too large to fit in his subspace with the rest of the equipment) close.

He got a good grip, and Blades circled the fracas with his jetpack, then together they headed toward the moon.

.

.

.

 


	6. Chapter six — Approach to the Innermost Cave

The moon was a truly alien landscape. 

Nothing like the metallic surface of Cybertron, white spires of rock jutted up in the distance and loomed suddenly out of the mists. The air — and the moon did have air — was cold, and condensation collected on their armor, only to evaporate into eerie clouds around the cracks, where their engines' heat bled through strongly enough. The sound of Blade's rotors rebounded and echoed off the spires, strange and distorted by the crystals that grew over them. Sometimes, when they skirted close enough to a spire to see through the mist, those crystals were taller than Megatron, taller than any mech, taller than — in one case — the palace of Iacon itself. The thick white clouds turned the transition across the lunar divide from day to night into a journey from darkness to a white twilight.

So thick were the mists that Blades depended entirely on his radar suite to navigate the spires and canyons of mist-colored rock.

They were following a seeker's distress beacon. Like all their short-range comm systems, the signals were too weak to travel far, much less out of the lunar atmosphere. As soon as they'd descended into the white clouds that made up the moon's seemingly featureless surface, they'd begun picking the beacon up. Hopefully, it was Starscream. They assumed it was Starscream. Jazz couldn't think of any other seekers who would be on the moon, unless the signals belonged to mecha who had been sent by Vos to rescue their wayward prince, and gotten in trouble themselves. If it was their quarry, what a relief, in more ways than one! It meant he was alive. It gave them a place to start searching.

Jazz hadn't wanted Blades to come this far with them, just give them a lift to the lunar surface and then return to his crew.

"Protectobots pay their debts," Blades had said, refusing to leave the two youngsters. "Captain Hot Spot and the others'll be alright without me for a bit, and the Combaticons are too busy to set their trap for them. They'll be fine. Besides... you're going to slay a dragon! That is  _ so cool! _ "

He argued. He didn't have another dose of fire ward or fuel stabilizers, and the helicopter was much larger and much more noticeable than two grounders traveling via Wheeljack's climbing gear, but he'd underestimated the lunar spires. The deep canyons. The cliffs and channels. He'd underestimated the mists. They would have needed Optimus’ gear to get them both across, not just Jazz’s, and it would have taken much longer than Jazz thought it would. Even though clinging to the other mech's landing skids was uncomfortable, Jazz eventually had to admit that he was grateful for the lift.

He'd have been even more grateful had Blades' interior been big enough for both of them. Drift slept through most of the trip, which Jazz didn't begrudge him, but it would have been nice to do the same.

He shook that train of thought away. Blades may have said he was paying a debt, but he was really doing them a favor. Jazz had been raised better than to complain about the specifics.

If they hadn't been following the distress signal, they would have passed up the crack in one of the crystal-covered spires. The dark cave entrance was hidden entirely by the mist. Blades edged closer and closer, cautiously, as though unsure what to do about the signals coming, seemingly, from solid rock. They were almost inside the entrance before they saw it properly.

Jazz dropped to the cave floor and scurried out of Blades' way as he landed. The  _ thump! _ of those skids hitting the ground woke Drift and he scrambled out so that the helicopter could transform and the three of them could face whatever was in the cave together.

So far it seemed like there was nothing but white, chalky dust. Already they had smears of it over their feet and legs, caking into their seams and covering their armor like the acid-resistant caulk used to seal windows.

"So where's the dragon?" Blades said, far too loudly in Jazz's opinion, but it was Drift who  _ shushed _ him.

"Out, hopefully," Jazz answered. "Goal's to rescue Starscream. If we can do it without ever  _ seeing _ the dragon, nothing'd make me happier."

"Where's the fun in that?" Blades complained.

"You  _ want _ to get burned up?" Drift asked sarcastically.

"No dragon could catch me! I'm much too fast!"

"Ain't," Jazz said quietly, remembering Wheeljack's stories, "nothing faster than a dragon."

That sobered everyone up, and even Blades was quiet as the cave went from just crystal and chalk to a turning, twisting, full-of-sudden-drops passage that Jazz could barely navigate with his grappling hook. He shot the hook from his hand, grabbed a nearby ledge and swung down to it. He managed on his own (mostly), but Blades and Drift managed only with a combination of Blades' rotors and Jazz's extra climbing gear. The passage was big enough for a dragon, Jazz thought, but only barely. Like it was trying to keep other dragons out.

_ Or in _ . Jazz shivered at the thought, and dismissed it as the sort of thought one had after escaping a slavers' ship. Not even another dragon could keep a dragon against its will.

Finally, multiple chambers later, the cavern opened up again, this time into what looked to Jazz like nothing less than a library. A massive library. A large cushion on the ground, as large as the foundation of one of Iacon's houses, showed where the occupant spent its time. Jazz shivered again. He really hoped to find Starscream and leave before the dragon returned. He wasn't even sure the three of them could penetrate a dragon’s scale-armor. Foolish, perhaps, to think that this was even possible without the Starsaber, but the sword belonged to Optimus. No other could wield it, not until the Prime's spark went out and the sword chose a new bearer. He wandered over to one of the shelves to look, expecting gems or jewels or the bloody trophies of previous slayers, like in stories.

The shelf had a game on it. An old Iaconi board game called Hex, which Jazz remembered playing in the creche. Next to it was a pile of polymer flimsies. Jazz picked one up and read it.

It was a list of names and wagers. Shanix bet, lost and won... and debts accrued. Hundreds of them, with dozens of different mechs, including the name of one long-ago Prime that Jazz recognized. He moved onto the next shelf. Another game, one he didn't recognize, also accompanied by a pile of debts.  _ Dragons collect valuable things _ , Wheeljack had said.  _ They collect them and they hoard them, even if in doing so they become worthless. And just what attracts each dragon's attention is unique. It could be valuable metals, priceless jewels. Anything really. _ "Even debts," Jazz told his memory, attracting the confused looks of his companions. "This is the dragon's hoard," he clarified. Blades and Drift looked around the room with new optics.

If each shelf had a game, and each game had a pile of flimsies with debts won playing those games... thousands. Hundreds of thousands of shanix and favors filled the room. The dragon had reason to be proud of its hoard.

The distress signal still echoed around them, so Jazz knew this was the dragon who'd taken the seeker they were following.  _ Primus, this had better be Starscream _ .

Blades buzzed his rotors impatiently and something over near the cushion fluttered. Jazz went to investigate and found more flimsies.

It was… actually, Jazz didn’t know what it was at first. An alien concept spilled out across the collection of flimsies.

One of them was clearly one of the debt-records from the dragon’s vast collection. One debt was highlighted and then repeated at the top of the next sheet. From there, names of mechs had been written out, one following the other. Branching out from the first. The others were research. Meticulous research, connecting one mech to the previous one in a heroic attempt to establish a line of descent. Pages and pages of attempts to trace spec designers, builders, programmers, who had visited one of the Wells to retrieve and enframe the spark, adoptions and guardianships. The dragon had been trying to figure out who had inherited this debt.

And had found Starscream, mostly by giving up on all the previous details and following the line of Vosk princes, the ruling trines determined either through adoption by the previous princes, or through election by the Vosk Council of Citizens.

He thought again of that ancient Prime’s name on one of the records. Did that mean that  _ Optimus _ potentially owed this dragon something? Maybe it was a good thing the Prime hadn’t come this far.

_ And Optimus is just the sort of soft spark that he’d try paying _ , Jazz thought, putting the flimsies down where he’d found them. He was about to suggest they move on, deeper in the cave to find Starscream when he heard a massive  _ THUMP _ echo through the chalky rock from the direction of the entrance. The others heard it too. It sounded like the dragon was home.

“Hide!” he hissed and the three of them scattered to do so.

The sound of his own fans spinning nervously was all he heard as the dragon came closer and closer. Was it taking a long time? Was the dragon taking longer than they had to traverse the distance before? Couldn’t be... All he could think was that he didn’t have any fire-ward on. But the dragon wouldn’t risk burning up its precious,  _ flammable _ , hoard… would it? It probably wouldn’t, but maybe it would, Jazz couldn’t really be —

“HI!”

_ “Gah!” _ So unexpected was the voice, from  _ that _ direction that he almost tumbled off the edge of the bookshelf he was flattened on top of. Pure reflex had him catching edge before he tumbled off.

Sheepishly the dragon put its —  _ his _ snout under Jazz’s aft, boosting him back up onto the shelf. The squire nearly leapt up, to get away from those enormous teeth.

This  _ wasn’t _ the dragon he could still hear struggling through the entrance tunnel. He could still hear that one and this wasn’t it. Neither was…  _ the other dragon _ he could now see stalking into the room behind the first. Three dragons.  _ Three! _

He searched out Drift and Blades with his optics. Both had weapons out, though a shiv and a bayonet wouldn’t scratch the beasts’ armor any more than his scattershot blaster would. Frantically he transmitted a  _ “Stand down!” _ over comms to both of them. They weren’t fighting  _ three _ dragons.

_ Three! _

To his relief, both of them had their weapons stowed by the time the second dragon finished sniffing them out. So much for hiding.

With as charming a smile as he could summon, he turned his attention back to the dragon who’d addressed him. Big blue optics stared out at him from grey facial armor. Red horns tilted as the dragon regarded him. “Hi. M’name’s Jazz. We’re looking for a friend of ours. Don’t suppose you’ve seen him?” He tried to remember, from eavesdropping on Prime’s calls to Vos, what the prince had looked like besides  _ wings _ and  _ heel thrusters _ . “Red optics, bright paint, seeker frametype?”

The other dragon, a black and white armored creature also with red horns, snorted. The grey dragon though, quivered with excitement. “My name’s Bluestreak, and that’s Prowl,” the dragon’s tail waved, gesturing to his companion. “And the one coming down the tunnel is Smokescreen. And that that sounds like Starscream. He’s further in and wow! He’s your  _ friend _ ? I didn’t think he would have any friends, he’s so grumpy all the time. Sooooo grumpy… and  _ mean _ . If he hadn’t been so mean we wouldn’t eat him when he’s done, but —”

_ “Bluestreak!” _ the other dragon, Prowl, scolded.

“Hmmm?”

“If he’s their friend, you shouldn’t talk about eating Starscream in front of them. No matter how mean he’s been.”

“Why not?” Bluestreak stepped away from the shelf and put his front claws on the ground. Jazz could see the two dragons were the same size and frametype. Huge ( _ big enough to eat Jazz with just one bite _ , his mind insisted frantically and he tried to ignore it, lest he start shaking and never stop), but not so tall that their long necks could reach to the top of the shelf with all four feet on the ground. “We’re just going to eat them too, aren’t we?”

Blades puffed out his armor and only Jazz’s frantic gesture to stay calm kept him from saying anything they’d all regret. No matter what they were  _ saying _ , they weren’t  _ currently _ eating the three of them. Jazz’d really like to put that off as long as possible.

“It’s rude,” the black and white dragon asserted.

“So what,” he interrupted before Bluestreak could begin his arguments about the etiquette of talking to future-food, “do you need Starscream to do before you eat him?”

The two dragons shared a look, then looked back to Jazz. “He’s supposed to teach us to fly,” said Bluestreak.

Before Jazz could think of a response to that, the third dragon came in, tail first, dragging a carcass that was thank-Primus too large to be a mech’s, was large enough to maybe-feed both the dragons already present, and the two dragons pounced on the proffered food. Enthusiastically. All three of the mechs winced as the dead creature was shredded so the two youngsters (they  _ had _ to be youngsters, if they didn’t know how to fly) could get at the energon within.

The two young dragons safely occupied, the other, red and blue dragon, turned to the three intruders with narrowed blue optics. He had impressively long yellow horns and the sort of nicks and dings in his armor that definitely marked him as older than the other two, even though he was the same size. “Which one of you is in charge?”

Silently Drift and Blades both pointed up at Jazz.  _ Thanks guys _ .

Still, he smiled brightly at the older dragon’s glower. “If you’ve hurt —” he started to growl angrily, standing up and bracing on the shelf to glare at Jazz from close range.

Jazz held up his hands to show they were empty, scrambling backwards on the shelf until he hit the wall. “Didn’t touch your kids!” He made an X over his spark chamber with one finger. “Cross my spark. They look hurt to you?”

Smokescreen — if this was Smokescreen — briefly glanced over at the two young dragons, completely absorbed in squabbling over the tastiest bits of whatever that thing had been before it become dragon food. “No.” He still sounded angry, but not immediately murderous. “ _ What _ are you doing in my lair?”

“Looking for Starscream,” Jazz answered promptly. “You kinda kidnapped one of the ruling trine of Vos for your flying lessons and we’d,” ignoring for the moment that none of them were  _ from _ Vos, “kinda like him back, you know, intact.”

Now the dragon snorted in amusement. “If he wasn’t so  _ screechy _ I would have released him when he was done, but he made Bluestreak cry. I would have killed him then if they didn’t need those flying lessons so badly.”

Jazz’s optics darted around the room. He couldn’t kill a dragon, not without one of the holy weapons of Primus unless he was really,  _ really _ , lucky, and he didn’t  _ want _ to kill the two youngsters now that he knew why Starscream had been taken in the first place, but he still needed a way for all four of them to get out of this alive. Maybe… “What about playing a game? I win, you release Starscream to us when your kids know how to fly; you win, I’ll owe you a favor… and either way,  _ I’ll _ teach them to fly. Sounds reasonable?” The dragon did collect debts, after all.

_ “What the frag do you think you’re doing?” _ Drift demanded over comms. A glance over at him showed that he had one of Blades’ rotors in a restraining grip, holding the pirate helicopter back from doing something stupid. He  _ clearly _ wished he could also prevent Jazz from doing stupid things, but the squire was out of reach. Jazz ignored him. He knew what he was doing… hopefully.

Smokescreen was tempted, that was clear, but he held back, snorting inelegantly and blowing a waft of hot air from his nasal vents at Jazz, whose fans clicked on to deal with the sudden heat. “You? You’re not even a flying frametype. What do  _ you _ know about flying?”

“More than that seeker,” he shot back, more confident than he felt. “Seekers’re all speed. Wings and thrusters meant to take them up past Mach One as fast as possible. But your wings aren’t airfoils; they’re  _ sails _ . Like a kite. And  _ I _ know  _ everything _ about flying a kite.”

The dragon chuckled in amusement. “Alright, I’ll bite,” and all three of them winced at the choice of word there, which only made Smokescreen grin toothily, “since you could hardly be a worse teacher. What game would you like to play?”

What sort of games did heroes play with dragons? Jazz had always been more interested in hearing about how they flew than how they were slain, but he was pretty sure games weren’t part of the picture. In Wheeljack’s stories, they stormed in with a blessed lance and their squires hauled their deactivated bodies back home. Or they were clever and skilled, luring the dragon out of the cave and into a trap, and  _ maybe _ came back under their own power… or they were clever, skilled and  _ unlucky _ and their squires hauled their deactivated frames back home. Kinda depressing, really, if he thought about it, that Optimus had originally brought Jazz along to bring the news of his knight’s success or death back to Iacon, not because he needed Jazz’s help.

But what sort of game? Silently he dismissed the idea of a rigged game. Smokescreen was obviously  _ very _ experienced with all kinds of games, and would spot a rigged one from a light year away.

Ultimately the question came down to skill or luck. Did he want to try his skill against the dragon’s, or his luck? Too bad there wasn’t a kite-flying game…

He shook away that thought. It was the crux of the matter. There was only one thing he trusted himself to be better at than the dragon was, and it wasn’t games. Instead he’d be “fighting” the dragon on his own… turf, so to speak. His own version of Jazz’s kites.

His first thought was for the game he’d recognized earlier. But Hex was purely tactical, figuring out all the ways a piece could be placed or moved with the eventual goal of capturing the opponent's Prime piece. Jazz had found it more fun to play with his creche, none of whom were sparked tacticians, than with the older mechs in Iacon with more experience, familiarity, and innate talent for that sort of game. And judging by the pile of debts the dragon had won playing it, Smokescreen was no slouch either.  _ Not _ what Jazz wanted to do. But remembering it also made him remember other games he and his creche had played. There was one that one of the younger armymechs had made for them, right when the Decepticons had returned, before their alliance with the necromancers of Tarn. Sideswipe hadn't named it, so the creche had called it Kaon vs Iacon.

Eventually most of Iacon had been playing it in the evening joors when the fighting had ceased. The adults who'd played called it heads vs tails. Official boards and pieces did exist, made by Iaconi craftsmechs before every effort had been channeled into survival and leisure put aside, but Jazz still remembered how to play it with just a piece of flimsy and a handful of shanix.

But since he didn't know how Smokescreen had acquired most of his games, he asked before assuming the dragon had never seen it before.

As he explained the nuances of the map, the mechanic of coin-flipping to determine what moves could be made, and how one accumulated victory points to win the game, Smokescreen looked intrigued. He didn't recognize the game, to Jazz's relief.

So while he drew out the version of the map he remembered, on one of the dragon’s flimsies, Smokescreen produced a handful of shanix. Jazz divided it up evenly, then demonstrated each move, how it was payed for and then finally how victory points were counted at the end.

Meanwhile, the two younger dragons fought over the last bits of the carcass, hissing and snapping at each others' horns while they argued who needed the extra more, divided it, and Bluestreak hauled his larger share of it away. Prowl though, having secured his right to the piece he had, left it to watch Jazz and Smokescreen.

Jazz fidgeted under Prowl's gaze while he and Smokescreen played, and he was glad that the game was a fairly quick one, designed to be played in under a breem, or else the suspense might have simply killed him outright. As it was, he nearly reverted to his sparkling-habit of peeling the paint off his hands in his nervousness.  _ Finally _ Smokescreen totalled their victory points, counting carefully the coins each of them had, and the territories they held.

Smokescreen snorted again, the resulting hot air making Jazz uncomfortable in his plating until it dissipated. Prowl looked over at his calculations. “Jazz wins,” the younger dragon said.

Scarcely able to believe it, Jazz peeked at the flimsy. It was true.

“I’ll show them in,” Prowl offered.

The door, deeper in Smokescreen's lair, was almost incongruous.

A simple affair, like the rest of the lair, Prowl had to push with all his strength to get it open. It inched open slowly —

"Prowl!" Bluestreak called out, "Don't let her escape!"

Prowl was in no position to catch the silver blur that shot out of the chamber beyond, and Jazz only danced out of the way, all his reflexes screaming at him to  _ avoid _ . Drift, though, snatched the little cybercat as it — she? — tried running past.

Bluestreak joined Prowl in hauling the door open, pulling from the other side. "Oh! You caught her! Thank you so very much!" Drift, frozen by the dragon's focus, managed a mumbled response. "Come on, let's put her back with the others."

“She’s so cute!” Blades cooed, insincerely, but that was lost on Bluestreak and Jazz made a note to tell him to tone it down. He hadn’t forgotten that it was  _ making Bluestreak cry _ that had made Smokescreen decide to eat Starscream once the lessons were over.

“She is! So are the others. Come in and I’ll introduce you. That’s Dazzle — she’s really fast and is always trying to escape — and her spark-kin are Puff, Flutter, Snow and Cloud…”

Drift looked like he couldn’t believe he’d joined in on this crazy, but gamely followed Bluestreak in. Jazz and Blades sauntered in after.

The door closed behind them with a strut-shaking  _ BOOM _ .

The ominousness of that was  _ almost _ overlooked, given the sheer cuteness of the scene they walked into. Bluestreak beckoned them over to return the kitten to the colony of cybercats currently licking energon from the piece the dragon had dragged back here earlier. Inexorably Drift seemed drawn to the scene, and even Blades was entranced.

For his part Bluestreak was  _ ecstatic _ to have the audience. “... and these are Rain, Flittermoon, Breeze, Kiss — because she likes to nuzzle your face, see? — Star…”

Jazz had to shake off his own fascination with the cats. They'd been common in Iacon, to control pests, but were shy and rarely seen even by inquisitive youngsters. Bluestreak’s hoard (for that had to be what these cats were) seemed friendly enough to cuddle with any warm frame. But shake it off he did. "You two have fun," he murmured. Keeping the dragon happy and not eating them was a priority. "I'm gonna find Starscream."

_ And then crash _ , he thought. Drift had gotten some rest on the way in, riding Blades' passenger compartment, and Blades had been in a cell. Not precisely restful, true, but also not running from a Decepticon bounty hunter (twice), getting shot, playing hide and seek in the rigging of a ship, then clinging to the underside of a helicopter for joors. Jazz's injuries hurt, and now that he was (nominally) safe, his struts ached and his processor was feeling fuzzy. Find Starscream. Once he found the seeker prince, he'd be able to rest for a bit.

Prowl nodded seriously, his large head bobbing up and down in a manner that would have been comical on anyone else, even his fellow dragons. But Prowl was just so controlled and dignified, his every movement almost regal. "I'll show you to him."

Even further in, was the seeker. As scuffed and dirty as Jazz, Starscream sulked in the corner of a cage that had been built for him into the cave wall. A glowing blue cube of energon sat in front of him and he glared at it.

Starscream didn't even look up when they entered. "The energon's slag," he complained, with the air of someone who'd made the same complaint a thousand times before and knew it wasn't going to change anything, but was complaining anyway. Personally, he kinda agreed, given that that energon had probably come from the slaughtered creature earlier, but something about the  _ tone _ of the complaint set Jazz’s nerves on edge. This mech would probably complain about the highest quality Simfur engex if it was served to him in one of Iacon’s now extremely rare crystal chalices.

"How's that for grateful?" Jazz said lightly, and Prowl tilted his head seriously, settling in on his haunches to listen to the bickering between the seeker that had been annoying the slag out of them for orns and the little Iaconi who'd outwitted his eldest frame-kin. "I come all this way to rescue his aft, and all he can do is complain."

"Indeed," Prowl commented, a rumble of amusement coloring his voice as the seeker finally leapt up from where he was sulking in his cage to stare at the not-a-dragon who'd come. "One of the many reasons we'll be glad to see him gone."

"Be happy, Starscream," Jazz said, "before about three breems ago 'gone' was going to mean 'eaten'."

The red and blue seeker flared his armor in irritation then settled it. "Rescued by a tiny grounder... I think I would have preferred to be eaten," he sneered.

_ Not happening _ . Jazz needed to bring the seeker back to Vos, political marriage to his Prime and whatnot to save the city...Maybe captivity was making Starscream extra snappish, but if not he  _ really _ hoped that Optimus had known what he was getting into before he'd agreed. "Well I didn't pass any Vosk on my way in. They probably all just flew around blindly until they got eaten by, you know,  _ other dragons _ ." Cockily he stepped forward, up next to the cage. "Looks like I’m your only hope."

"We’re doomed."

.

.

.


	7. Chapter seven — The Ordeal, part 1

Smokescreen left early in the evening, to hunt. Much to Drift’s dismay, Jazz dredged up the courage to call after the elder dragon to please bring something other than dead mechs back for them to eat. (Of course Jazz still had some energon in his subspace, but now that had to stretch to  _ four _ mechs — not including Bluestreak, who’d wanted to taste and had made kitten-optics at Blades until he’d given up his share. Unless the dragons were quick-studies and caught on tonight  _ someone _ was going to be drinking from the dragon’s kill by tomorrow.) A lot more good-humored than Jazz would have thought a dragon would be, Smokescreen blithely said he’d make  _ no promises _ .

“You shouldn’t give him a hard time,” Prowl said seriously, watching the door from the younger dragons’ area close between them and Smokescreen’s hoard. Jazz winced, hearing it lock. He hadn’t noticed a lock last night, but obviously he hadn’t been running on a full tank. Not that he and his fifty closest friends (much less the four of them here) could open it even unlocked. “He didn’t want a pair of younglings, but he takes good care of us anyway, even without a life-partner to help.”

“Yeah? What happened to his ‘life-partner’?” Silently he prayed to Primus and whoever else might be listening that the elder dragon’s bonded hadn’t been killed by an Iaconi Knight.

Prowl just looked at him. “He doesn’t have one. All three of us were built by Snowdrift and Swiftsteel. Smokescreen’s from their first clutch, so when they were killed he took us in.”

“And,” Jazz asked, slowly because he wasn’t sure he wanted to know, “how did they die?”

The black and white dragon just shrugged his massive wings. “We aren’t sure. Snowdrift went out to hunt and never returned. Shortly after that, Swiftsteel was killed defending the nest cave from another dragon who wished to take Bluestreak and I. Smokescreen stopped looking for a bonded to raise us, lest his intended have similar ideas.”

_ Why would someone want to  _ kidnap _ a youngling? _ was on its way out of his vocalizer when Bluestreak came running in, for once without a single cybercat in evidence. “Flying now?”

It was probably for the best the conversation be interrupted. He smiled at the grey and red dragon, trying for charming and knowing it was probably lost on the two who were very different from himself. “Sure. Where’s our practice area?”

_ “See if you two can find a way out,” _ he silently sent to Drift and Blades over comms as he followed Bluestreak deeper into the lair-caverns.

When he’d thought about “flying lessons”, Jazz had naturally  _ assumed _ that he and the pair of younger dragons would be outside, in the eerie mists of the moon. He’d been wrong.

Instead he was led down into an enclosed cavern. As big as the palace of Iacon and much of the surrounding buildings, but still completely closed in.

_ I can do this _ , he told himself while the two dragons watched him assemble and check over the battle kite. The familiar task settled him, preparing him for battle. But when he looked up, it wasn’t two opponents he had, but two students.

Dragon flight wasn’t  _ exactly _ like flying a kite, but if they didn’t know the components involved, he didn’t know what he’d do about teaching them to use all the fiddly bits and pieces of their own anatomy. “So how much do you two already know?”

Silently Prowl crouched and gave a (relatively) small jump, taking him into the air, where he floated there on his anti-gravs. He started to tilt sideways and snapped his wings out to catch the air and balance, which worked until he flapped them, trying to go somewhere. Then his anti-gravs sent him careening off towards a wall. Prowl did manage to cut the anti-gravs and spill the air from his wings to accomplish something that could be considered a graceful landing.

Jazz looked at Bluestreak, who lowered his head bashfully (which just happened to give the much smaller mech a  _ beautiful _ view of the dragon’s teeth now at eye-level), “About the same, except Prowl’s much better at landing. I still can’t get the timing right for not falling. If I cut the anti-gravs too soon, then there’s too much weight on my wings and I go tumbling down; if I cut them too late,I’ve got no air in my wings to slow my descent and just plain crash.”

“Okay.” Jazz quite honestly didn’t know how to deal with the anti-grav issues with landing. “So… I’ve got a question. How much would falling in here hurt you two? Just out of curiosity.”

“Why?” asked Prowl.

Jazz gave him a crooked grin. “Can’t learn to fly without falling a few times. Actual fact.”

Prowl narrowed his yellow optics. “I don’t believe you really can fly.”

“Prove it,” echoed Bluestreak.

“Okay,” Jazz looked around the cavern. Up near the top there were some stalactites he could use, but drama was the order of the moment. He collected the kite and its line so that it wouldn’t tangle while he did this, then sauntered over to Prowl’s wingtip. He tugged it. “Mind giving me a boost?”

With a questioning look, Prowl unfurled the wing, now with Jazz clinging to it, and with a great flap catapulted the mech into the air.

He let himself fly upwards, twisting and somersaulting over and over until he felt himself hit the apex of his arc and somersaulted one last time to bring the kite beneath him. He blasted the  _ Hymn _ as he always did when falling from the palace roofs and laughed when the sudden noise made the fascinated dragons both flinch in surprise.

He did a wide, slow circle, not letting himself loose much altitude, then suddenly snagged one of those stalactites with his grappling hook, tumbling over himself to fall and fling himself in a new direction, revelling in the drag of the kite behind him. He twisted around the stalactite like a chimney and sent himself into freefall on the other side. One glorious moment of weightlessness, and then he snagged another anchor point, this time using it to break just long enough for momentum to bring the trailing battle kite under him, and then he dropped onto it again. It was… fun. Pure fun, with no calls for energon or ammunition clamoring for his attention, no messages to deliver, no Decepticons, no scanning the streets for stray terrorcons to maim… just him and his kite. Smoothly he switched from the  _ Hymn _ to another piece, something old and nameless with no words, but simply the emotion of movement and danced along.

Two breems of twisting, turning, and end-over-end flips later, he took the kite and dove towards Prowl.

He pulled up just in time to  _ thwap _ his snout with the kite’s tail, then flipped to catch air again but without the forward momentum he simply floated to the ground. He did a twirl, and dropped the last bit to the ground, a perfectly graceful landing a seeker should have been jealous of.

In time with the last note of the song, he bowed with a flourish.

Bluestreak looked entranced, which made Jazz’s spark flush with pride, but Prowl just looked evaluating. “That’s not flight,” he said. “It’s simply controlling how you fall. Stylish, I admit, but hardly useful to us.”

Jazz shrugged. He refused to feel stung by the dragon’s words. “You don’t need me to tell you how to use your anti-gravs; just to teach you how to use  _ those _ ,” he pointed to Prowl’s wings. “And those ain’t much different than this,” he hefted the battle kite. “Only difference is with a bit of effort you can do what I need my grappling hook to do — gain altitude. Ain’t hard, but you can’t be afraid to fall.”

“Did you? Fall?”

“ _ Primus yes _ ,” Jazz tried to laugh it off, and mostly succeeded, but his first experimental forays into using the battle kite prototypes had been less than successful. Broken struts had been the least of his injuries - and that was with him already pretty successful at galavanting over the rooftops without the kite. Ow… “It’s why I’m asking how much a fall in here would hurt you two: because I honestly ain’t looking forward to trying to explain to Smokescreen how one of you hurt yourself doing this, like I did when I was young and reckless,” Prowl gave him an incredulous look and Jazz amended with a grin, “Young _ er _ and  _ more _ reckless anyway.”

“As long as our anti-gravs don’t malfunction, it would take a fall from a much greater height than the ceiling of this cave to significantly harm us.”

That was good. “Alright then,” he clapped his hands and addressed Bluestreak. "So I can't exactly teach you the right timing for using your anti-gravs to land. I don't think anyone could, honestly, even another dragon, so what you're gonna do, Bluestreak, is practice." The dragon let out a deep groan and Jazz paused to make sure that wasn't a  _ time to eat the instructor _ sound. Didn't seem to be; Bluestreak just looked resigned. So Jazz pointed to a particular stalagmite he could see. "Climb up on that, glide off, and land before you hit a wall. Let me know when you've got the timing right, 'kay?"

Bluestreak nodded, his head-bobbing motion looking a lot sillier than Prowl’s did (not that he'd ever tell either dragon that), and bounced over to the indicated perch. Jazz turned back to Prowl.

Braver than he felt, he subspaced the battle kite and walked up to the dragon and put his hand against the thick scale-armor. "May I? It'll be easier for me to tell what you're doing right and wrong if I'm on you, same as my kite."

"Yes," said Prowl. "I want to learn."

It was  _ weird _ climbing the dragon's armor. He was big enough to be a house in Iacon, like hundreds he'd scaled before, but also  _ alive _ . Prowl was warm in the cool air, like any other mech, and Jazz could feel the near-silent  _ whirring _ of the dragon's fans, the soft humming of his systems and even the faint pulse of his spark, deep inside his chest. Prowl's plating shuddered and there was a soft hiccup of his systems. He wondered what the dragon felt from him. Was he only a tiny crawling bit of pressure, no different than one of Bluestreak's cybercats, that shudder only an instinctive reaction to something crawling on his plating? Or was it as odd for Prowl as it was for Jazz? He didn't know, and he wasn't going to ask.

"Ready," he said when he was in place, and he felt more than saw Prowl give that graceful head-bow. "Then let’s try hovering again, just in one spot. Use your tail for balance," like the tail of a kite, except the dragon could control it to change the way he balanced instead of it just being a counterweight to keep him upright, "and when we can do that without falling, we'll try going up and down in a column.

Unlike riding the battle kite, Prowl felt solid and steady. The battle kite was always bucking, on the very edge of falling out of the air under Jazz's weight, held aloft only by the air beneath. Prowl's anti-gravs and sheer size gave the illusion of being as solid as the ground — or at least as steady as the Combaticons' ship, since Prowl still moved, that "steady" armor rolling beneath Jazz with every flap of his great wings... until he tilted. Instinctively Jazz leaned as he would on the kite to steady himself, and Prowl responded swinging his tail and adjusting his wings until he was steady again. "Good job," he murmured, and felt Prowl's armor heat-flush in response.

Bluestreak was still crashing when Jazz felt Prowl had enough balance hovering to try going up and down, though to Jazz’s optics his timing was getting better incrementally. The grey and red dragon seemed in good spirits, seeing his own improvement, and didn’t seem to be taking any harm at all from the hard landings, so Jazz left him to it and guided Prowl through using his wings to gain and lose altitude. By the time they were practicing some soft, slow turns and Prowl was getting the hang of it, Bluestreak seemed ready to try something else.

So he unsubspaced his kite and glided down to where Bluestreak was practicing, leaving Prowl to fly around the cave slowly on his own. He landed with a flourish right as Blustreak did an almost graceful landing, which made the dragon vibrate with pride. Jazz gave him an encouraging grin. “Want to try hovering?”

“YES!”

He climbed up on Bluestreak, who didn’t shiver under his hands like Prowl had. Maybe he was more used to being crawled on because of the cybercats? “Alright, up, gently, and we’ll see how this goes.”

Bluestreak had less innate grace in the air than Prowl. Jazz didn’t comment. He wasn’t sure if it was because the grey dragon didn’t have the inherent grace with which Prowl did  _ everything _ or if it was because Bluestreak had less practice hovering than Prowl had even before. Still he was enthusiastic with everything he did and eager to follow Jazz’s corrections. It wasn’t long before he was practicing going up and down, while Prowl circled slowly and watched.

“Prowl! Look!” Bluestreak’s voice was loud enough to set Jazz’s audios ringing as it echoed off the distant cavern walls.

“I see.”

“So do I.”

Both dragons squawked in surprise. Prowl slipped sideways in the air, losing altitude but managing to catch himself before he found himself in a tumble from which he couldn’t escape. Bluestreak wasn’t so lucky (or skilled). He tumbled and Jazz, panicked at the thought that the dragon might fall  _ on him _ and squish him flat — visions of Blades and Drift trying to complete the mission flitted through his mind, though he knew that was actually the  _ least _ of his worries — jumped blindly away from his spot between Bluestreak’s wings and launched his grappling hook at the nearest anchoring point.

**_CRASH!_ **

The fall sent the ever-present lunar dust up in clouds and it drifted from the ceiling, filling the air and vibrating with the echoes. Slowly the echoes and dust cleared, leaving behind a thick silence.

And Jazz found himself hanging by his grappling hook by one of Smokescreen’s horns, the dragon’s nearest optic glaring balefully at him. “Hi,” Jazz’s voice, full of bravado, was over-loud in the silence.

"I'm  _ fine _ ," Bluestreak hissed and both Smokescreen and Jazz took a moment to watch Prowl help his brother up. The black and white dragon was fussing, and the grey one was hissing and snapping and actually managing to get up (mostly) on his own. Jazz wasn't an expert in dragon frames, but he didn't move like he'd been hurt beyond an obvious dent or two. Nothing cracked or snapped.

Smokescreen must have agreed because when his attention turned back to the ornament hanging helplessly from his horn, that glare was a bit less baleful. "I see the three of you are making progress."

"Yep!" It was  _ real _ hard to maintain a cheerfully casual tone while this close to the dragon's teeth, but Jazz somehow managed. "Both of them are real naturals." Prowl quietly came up behind Jazz and he yelped when the dragon's snout came up under his feet, but when he saw the younger dragon he took the offer of a solid place to stand over continuing to hang there. "They'll both be flying in no time!"

"Good," said Smokescreen, turning away. "Dinner time."

_ Please not a mech. _

It wasn't a mech. Or even a pile of them, which would have still made sense. It was some weird flying thing that looked like it was mostly made from a now-deflated mylar balloon with a collection of tentacles hanging from its underside. Or what he thought was its underside. Jazz watched the two dragons tear into Smokescreen's prey trying to figure out what was wrong. It wasn't like he was really disturbed by the dragons eating a thing he couldn't even identify... then it came to him. It was too small. He'd seen how much the pair could eat the night before and this creature was barely half that. It also was whole. Smokescreen had already taken his share of the other one before dragging it to the cave, but Jazz could see no missing pieces on this one.

Was there even going to be enough left over for the four comparatively tiny mechs currently living with them? Or Bluestreak's cybercats?

No, he saw there wasn’t.

Maybe Smokescreen had caught something for himself before dragging this strange lunar creature back... but Jazz didn't think so.

As he watched Prowl and Bluestreak fight over the last scraps of mylar, Jazz thought the elder dragon wouldn't short his kids' meals. If he'd caught something else, he'd have brought it back to feed to Prowl and Bluestreak. Suddenly Smokescreen's need for a flying instructor — and the locks — made a lot more sense. He'd been saddled with a pair of newsparks before he was ready to take care of them. A life partner was needed to help with the hunting, and to fend off other dragons who would try and take the newsparks.

He left the dragons and returned to Starscream's cage. Drift and Blades were there, drawing out a map of the cave complex and bickering with the Vosk prince. Well, Drift drew the map while Blades and Starscream bickered. Jazz reached into the the little stone hollow he hoped was small enough to discourage draconic investigation and pulled out two cubes of energon. "Half rations," he said. "Smokescreen had a bad hunt and they don't have anything to share tonight." He didn't say that if the dragons  _ did _ have something to share tomorrow, he'd make them take it, rather than doling out the rest of the energon he'd brought.

Starscream sniffed. "Like there's any difference between that swill you brought and the swill they've been feeding me."

Anger made Jazz's visor flash red and he held himself still, counting himself through the meditation prayer Optimus had taught him before responding. "Well I'm sorry if our Iaconi war-rations aren't up to the standards of the palace of Vos. If you don't like it, maybe I'll put it back with the rest, to see us through another day." He reached for the half-cube he'd given the seeker, who hissed and drew it away, deeper into the cell where Jazz couldn't get it.

Jazz counted that as a win.

"So tell me about the rest of the cave."

There weren't any other exits, was the first thing Drift and Blades said. The only way they were getting out was when the dragons opened that door for them.

Jazz sighed and contemplated the dregs of his half-cube. No escaping while the dragons slept… not that he really thought he wanted to now. He needed to get back — to get  _ Starscream _ back — for Iacon’s sake, but Prowl and Bluestreak also needed him, and it might be sacrilege according to the long-dead paladins who’d taken it upon themselves to slay dragons for one reason or another, but he felt like they  _ deserved _ his best.

A paw touched his leg and he looked into the big optics of one of Bluestreak’s cybercats. He thought it might be the one named Kiss.

“Mrrw?”

With a sigh Jazz dipped his finger into his cube and let the kitten lick it clean. It made contented little noises while it did so, which attracted the other hungry cats and Jazz was quickly mobbed.

“Thanks Jazz!” Bluestreak said when he came in, towing the (relatively) very tiny morsel and dropping it for the cats to have. It was more metal than energon, and several of the cats prefered Jazz’s doled out drips. Prowl padded in after his frame-sibling, far too quietly for a creature his size.

By the time the cats were satisfied that there was no more energon (and no, neither Drift nor Blades had any either) the two dragons had retreated to their own lair-rooms and the four mechs (even Starscream, though the bars got in the way) piling on each other for warmth. It wasn’t comfortable, but without the activity from being awake, the lunar atmosphere sapped the heat from their bodies very quickly. Jazz would take  _ uncomfortable _ over  _ freezing to death _ any day. He turned off his visor and settled into recharge.

He woke up with something nudging him. His visor blinked on, focused on the  _ very large teeth _ , and he nearly tumbled over the pile of sleeping mechs before he recognized Prowl. He took a deep in-vent of the cold lunar air to steady himself. “What’s up,” he managed, much more casually than he felt.

Prowl drew back and tilted his head in a muted echo of Bluestreak’s embarrassment. “You’ve seen both Bluestreak’s and Smokescreen’s, so I wondered if you’d like to see my hoard?”

Really he shouldn’t. He should recharge so that he could teach the two dragons and then take Starscream back to Vos. But he was  _ curious _ so he nodded and carefully extricated himself from the mech-pile. He saw Drift’s optics light dimly, the gutter-mech aware when something around him moved. As he followed Prowl, Jazz motioned that he was okay and that Drift should go back to sleep. Jazz heard Drift huff his vents in response, but he didn’t wake the others and didn’t try and stop the squire from doing something he thought was really stupid.

Away from the others, it was cold. Jazz caught a ledge and used it to boost himself up onto Prowl, snuggling into the warm little hollow next to his wing. Prowl’s steps faltered a bit, but he didn’t tell Jazz to get down.

“Here,” he said instead, as he entered his own lair-cave.

Unlike Smokescreen’s, which was full of shelves piled with games and debts, or Bluestreak’s, which was empty save for the dragon himself and the cybercats that wandered in and out freely, Prowl’s contained only a single large pool in the center.

Curious, Jazz jumped down to investigate.

At first he thought he was looking at gems and even felt a moment’s disappointment. Prowl had struck him as more imaginative than those story-dragons and their hoards of stones. Then one of the purest rubies darted away from Jazz’s light, swimming through acid so clear he’d thought it was air and he saw the “gems” for what they really were. Cybertriops, each the color of a gemstone.

Rubies and emeralds darted through the acid. Diamonds glittered under his headlights. Yellow and orange topazes danced through the acid with purple amethysts. Little onyxes, black as space, darted in and out of the shadows cast by their companions.

There wasn’t a single blemish on any of them. Jazz realized this had to be only a small part of it. Somewhere, Prowl had to have spaces where he kept the mechanimals separate from each other, and raised them with the right mix of minerals to take on their colors before releasing them here to be admired.  _ That _ sounded like the meticulous Prowl he’d come to know.

“Where’s the blue?” he asked softly, still utterly enchanted by the pool.

“I haven’t found the right mix of minerals to grow blue ones yet,” Prowl responded.

Jazz looked up and smiled. “Well… let me tell you about a series of caves between Rodion and Iacon, guarded by swarms of energon-thirsty insecticons…”

And Jazz spent the day telling the dragon stories of Cybertron, about the pirates’ ship, about evading the Decepticon bounty hunter. Cold seeped into Jazz’s plating and Prowl curled around him, creating a warm shelter under his wing and listened as Jazz moved on to stories about Iacon. Funny stories, about the trouble he and his creche got into. Sad stories about watching the knights fall in battle against the Decepticons. He told stories about a young mech who dreamed of places far away, and who taught himself to fly.

Eventually, curled up with each other, they slept.

.

.

.


	8. Chapter eight — The Ordeal, part 2

That Smokescreen had left to hunt before Jazz and Prowl stirred took on a new, ominous, significance after last night’s meager prey. The flying lessons took on a new sense of urgency — not just for Iacon’s sake, but also for the dragon family’s. Still, zipping around the cave on his battle kite, teaching the dragons to maneuver could never  _ not _ be fun, and he treated it as such.

Bluestreak had graduated from simple hovering to slow circles around the cave, and they were working on speeding up Prowl’s reaction time — and incidentally, on recovering from spinouts and crashes. No longer on their backs guiding them, Jazz zipped around the cave, kite trailing behind him serving as an anchor point, platform and glider while Prowl tried to catch him.

It was harder — for both of them — than it sounded.

“Whooo!” Jazz shouted as he sent the kite into a diving spin only a hand's width from the dragon’s teeth. The tail flicked against Prowl’s chin almost teasingly, and he instinctively snapped at it, missing  _ that _ by an even narrower margin. “Can’t catch me!”

Bluestreak laughed and then yelped as he almost flew into one of the cave’s big stalactites again.

“Focus on  _ your _ flying, Blue, not your brother’s!”

But taking the moment to reprimand the grey dragon cost Jazz — he  _ really _ should pay attention to his own lessons — as Prowl took advantage of the distraction and did a (frankly) impressive mid-air spin to snag the kite-string with his tail. With a yelp of his own, Jazz tumbled from the kite and was caught in the dragon’s claws.

Prowl was  _ very _ pleased with himself as he landed to release his captive and detangle the strings. “Caught you,” he breathed softly, and Jazz shivered.

“Sure did.”

Bluestreak glided in and landed (perfectly) next to them. “Can I try the chase-thing next?”

Jazz pulled himself away from looking into Prowl’s optics and beamed. “Sure thing.” He circled around Prowl, who, after so many times, offered his wing tip automatically to toss the smaller mech up into the air. He could feel the pistons and supports starting to tense, coiling for the throw, when —

**_THROOOM!_ **

It wasn’t  _ quite _ the strut-shaking sound of the door closing, but it echoed through the cavern like nothing else Jazz had heard. Bluestreak skittered sideways to Prowl, who wrapped his wing around the other dragon. Jazz dropped the short distance to the ground as Prowl pulled his other wing in close. “What was that?”

“The door,” Bluestreak answered.

“Someone’s trying to get in,” continued Prowl.

Jazz thought about that, then about the size of the door and the lock Smokescreen had on the door, and —

**_THROOOM!_ **

Another dragon. Jazz swore silently. That was  _ just _ what he needed. Primus! Wasn’t this mission complicated  _ enough? _

**_THROOOM!_ **

Apparently not. “What’s that mean?”

Bluestreak squeaked, like a creature one-hundredth his size.

Prowl somehow managed to tuck his brother even closer. “It means they’re going to try and take us while Smokescreen’s out.”

**_THROOOM!_ **

The next hit against the door drowned out Jazz’s squawk. “They can’t  _ do _ that!.. Can they?”

Prowl looked thoughtful. “Were we younger, then yes, definitely they could. But we’re almost flying — that’s the last thing before our youngling overrides automatically deactivate. They may have, just on the progress we’ve made, but I don’t know. If the overrides don’t shut us down, then we can’t be taken — we’re adults. If they do —”

**_THROOOM!_ **

“Then it’s just a matter of physically carrying us out of the cave,” Prowl finished.

Suddenly that long, twisting, difficult-to-navigate passage that was the entrance to Smokescreen’s lair made a fragging Pit of a lot more sense.

“What can we do?”

Prowl looked even more serious. “Unless the overrides don’t work, we — Bluestreak and I — can’t fight off an elder dragon. What you and your friends could do, I don’t know. Hide.”

Frag! Drift and Blades and fragging  _ Starscream! _ The intruder had no reason to keep them alive.

**_THROOOM!_ **

“Okay,” Jazz said,  _ much _ more calmly than he felt. “Plan: You two hide. I know,” he spoke over the objection he could see Prowl starting to make, “there isn’t much of a place for you to hide in here. Do it anyway. I’m going to see if we can stall them.”

**_THROOOM!_ **

_ And hope to Primus Smokescreen gets back soon _ , he didn’t say.

He left the dragons and took off driving through the passageway leading back up to the main lairs.

**_THROOOM!_ **

He almost missed the sound of Blade’s rotors, but saw the helicopter coming down the passage after him. He tumbled out of alt and snagged a landing skid, pulling himself up. Blades lurched under the unexpected weight and skidded to the side, nearly scraping a rotor against the rock, in his surprise.

“Hey Jazz. We got —”

“I know. Take us back up to Starscream’s cage. Drift waiting there?”

**_THROOOM!_ **

“Yeah. Doing his  _ grr _ face and everything.”

These passages were more than wide enough for the dragons to navigate with ease, so Blades had no issues at all zipping back up to where the mechs had been staying. They heard Starscream before they saw Drift, shiv out and ready to face whatever came through the door. Jazz ignored the tremble of dirty white plating; he was trembling too.

“What the frag’s going on?” Starscream shrieked.

**_THROOOM!_ **

“Another dragon,” Jazz said, dropping to the ground as Blades transformed.

“WHAT?!”

“Starscream, with all due respect,” which was none if Jazz had any choice about it, “ _ shut the frag up! _ Get in the back of your cage and pretend you’re a fragging  _ rock _ because if that dragon spots you, getting you out of that cage will no longer be an issue.” Maybe it was the urgency in Jazz’s voice, or maybe no one had ever outright told the Vosk prince to shut up before, but the seeker’s vocalizer clicked off and he mutely did as he was told. Getting no more trouble from that quarter, Jazz turned his attention to Drift and Blades. “We’ll hide in that first cavern, where Bluestreak usually feeds his cats, since that’s where it’ll have the least room to maneuver.” A deliberate bottleneck, he now suspected, built by Smokescreen to make carrying his kids away even harder. “Get up near the ceiling and hide — we’ll have a better chance hitting a weak spot in its armor from above. Drift, fire ward. Blades I’m sorry, but you’re just going to have to stay away from any fire breath.”

Blades nodded. “Don’t need it anyway; I’ve got atmospheric entry armor. That dragon can’t catch me.”

_ Primus, let it be so _ , Jazz prayed. The prayer was all he could offer.

**_THROOOM!_ **

Drift was already rubbing the fire ward gel into the cracks in his armor and Jazz popped the lid off his own container. Instead of painting it onto his plating though, he painted it onto his battle kite. He spread it over the graphene sheeting and over the strings. The tiny bit left over he painted over his visor and over his main energon line on his throat, and over his hands and feet. On Drift’s plating the gel was a dirty orange-brown, like coals hidden in ashes; on Jazz’s somewhat cleaner plating it glowed a bright red. The sparse markings gave him a fierce, battle-painted appearance.

On the blue graphene of the kite, the fire ward blazed pure orange, like it was already on fire.

**_THROOOM!_ **

Both mechs drank the fuel stabilizers.

Jazz met the bravado of his companions with his own. “Protect Starscream. Stall the dragon until Smokescreen gets back. Don’t die.”

It wasn’t exactly up to Prime-levels of inspirational, but it did the trick. They scattered, moving into their positions on the ceiling of the cave they’d chosen as their battleground.

The cats, Jazz noted somewhat hysterically, were all hiding like sensible creatures.

**_THROOOM!_ **

**_Crack!_ ** The door blew off its hinges and the dragon stood in the doorway, collecting himself. Bright green and purple scale armor gleamed in the mixed light and shadows.  _ He was bigger than Smokescreen. _ A yellow optical band illuminated the space as he peered into the room, flicking his tongue out to taste the air. “Prowl! Bluestreak!” he called softly, “Come out, come out, wherever you are… we both know Smokescreen’s too busy making sure you don’t starve to ever teach you to fly.”

_ Shows what you know _ , Jazz thought viciously, hugging the ceiling.

“My brothers and I though… we’ve got a nice lair — the nicest! — and the six of us are more than enough to hunt  _ and _ teach you everything you need. Come on out...”

The dragon passed beneath Jazz, his large wings scraping against the sides of the cave. The dragon gave a soft curse that still echoed in Jazz’s audios as he became momentarily stuck in the close quarters.

_ Now _ . Jazz dropped from the ceiling, buzzing the dragon’s visor with his glowing kite. The dragon jerked, a purely reflexive action that slammed his head into the top of the cave, stunning him. Jazz took advantage, snagging the dragon’s horn and whipping around his head, peppering his cheek-spurs with a pair of scattershot blasts that probably just pissed him off.

He saw Drift drop down, landing on the dragon’s neck. Clinging to a long purple spike, he viciously jabbed his shiv again and again into the dragon’s armor, looking for a weak spot.

Blades hovered above the dragon’s back, his helicopter-mode’s gatling gun raking the armor there, tearing through the thinner solar-sails of the wings.

The dragon roared in pain.

The dragon swung his head around, trying to catch Blades in his sights and Jazz somersaulted to land lightly on the dragon’s snout. “I’m right here,” he said, and shot the dragon twice in the yellow optic band. The glass didn’t even crack, but the dragon roared again, and, with a shake of his head, tossed Jazz into the nearest wall. Plating crumpled and he felt at least one strut crack.

Jazz scrambled to hold on —  _ don’tfalldon’tfalldon’tfall _ — and heard a great-big in-vent.

Frantically he unsubspaced Wheeljack’s sneezing powder —  _ whydidn’tyouthinkofthatearlier!? _ — and tossed it. It hit the dragon right on the snout and he got a great big whiff of it.

The dragon’s attempt to blast the impudent little mech with a gout of flame that would have incinerated much of the cave wall behind him ended abruptly as his vents backfired, violently. A spurt of flame still leapt out, which Jazz tumbled out of the way of, but the next backfire only blasted the cavern with air. Jazz tumbled close again, snagging the dragon’s horn and firing a pair of shots into his jaw. Maybe he could break a tooth or something.

No such luck. Jazz clung to the horn through another ventilation backfire, and shot the optic band again. Just a crack, and the dragon made a  _ sound _ halfway between a howl of pain and another sneeze.

A third backfire and the convulsion sent Drift flying. Blades abandoned his post to catch him.

There wasn’t a fourth. With a snarl the dragon reached up and brushed Jazz from his face. The squire somersaulted over the claw but the string was caught. He quick-released it so that it wouldn’t get him tangled up around the claws, and both the kite and he went tumbling to the ground.

It  _ hurt _ . Most of the plating along his back was now crumpled and at least one strut in his shoulder broken.  _ Primus, spark-father, pain is of the frame, not of the spark. Shield me so that I may _ … The dragon glared down at him and Jazz groped for the kite next to him.

He pulled it over himself just as the dragon spat flame.

The flame-warded kite shielded him from the worst of it, but the fire still sucked the air from his vents and howled around him. Blind and deaf to anything but the fire, Jazz could do nothing but hope it didn’t occur to the dragon to crush him while he burned.

The fire died down just in time for him to see Blades transform and land rather than crash.

Drift was also on the ground, lying far too still and without his shiv. Jazz scrambled over to him, his arm hanging uselessly from his shoulder. Drift was better off than Jazz, but still unconcious. The squire whirled to face the dragon, kite brandished on his good arm in front of both of them like a shield —

“That is enough, Scrapper.”

Jazz looked behind him to see Prowl making his way into the cave from deeper in the lair. His spark seized.  _ No _ .

Prowl continued walking, oblivious to Jazz’s thoughts.

Scrapper, the green and purple dragon, snarled. “Your pets are very annoying.”

“More than annoying, it seems.” Indeed now that Scrapper had stopped (for the moment) trying to kill them, Jazz could see the damage they’d managed to do to the dragon. Most of it was Blades’ work, along the wings, but Jazz could also see Drift’s shiv sticking out from between two armor-scales on Scrapper’s neck, bleeding sluggishly. And the cracked visor. “In these close quarters, if either Bluestreak or I can fight you, that damage will put you at a severe disadvantage.”

“ _ That’s _ not happening. I’ll just finish killing these insects and then start dragging you out of here.”

Prowl stepped over Jazz and Drift, shielding them with his leg, and spread his wings protectively in front of Blades. Another might have bristled or growled. Prowl did it silently, deliberately. “First things first.”

“You really want to do this?”

_ Now _ Prowl growled, a low threatening sound that vibrated the dust around them. Yes, he very much wanted to do this.

A moment passed, then two.

Then three, and Scrapper suddenly looked panicked. He backed out of the tunnel, scrambling, trying to put distance between himself and the no-longer-a-youngling. Prowl didn’t wait. He lept forward tearing at the older dragon, claws latching easily into his armor and ripping it away. The shiv went tumbling to the ground between them.

A frantic scuffle filled with snarls and roars, biting and hissing and the occasional blast of flame — and Scrapper managed to scuttle out of the cave, turning tail and climbing up the entrance tunnel.

Drift was starting to regain consciousness when the dust finally settled. Jazz let him wake up just enough to check for any processor damage, watching his optics focus and track a finger, and asking a few simple questions to make sure he was coming up lucid (not that there was anything  _ he _ could have done if he wasn’t) and, finding none, promptly sedated him into la-la-land. He kinda wished he could do the same to himself. He tried moving on to check over Blades, but the helicopter poked Jazz viciously in his broken shoulder with one finger and Jazz’s vision swam. He managed to  _ not _ scream, but only by biting his tongue hard enough to taste energon.

Not fooled, Blades crossed his arms. “Yeah. Sit the frag down. You’re next.”

Jazz wanted to protest — it wasn’t even the worst injury he’d ever taken from a fall — but Blades brandished his finger again, threatening to poke, and the squire subsided.

“Good. I’m no First Aid, but bro’s taught us all the basics. First things first,” Blades dug a sedative out of the field aid kit and jabbed Jazz with it before the smaller mech could squirm away. “Unless there’s possible processor damage, don’t work on a conscious patient.” He chuckled. “Might be a bit late to prevent processor damage on you, so a one-way trip into the land of the profoundly unconscious it is.”

Jazz tried to protest one last time that he didn’t need this, that there were things he needed to do before he could sleep, but the sudden lack of pain sucked away the words.

Prowl looked down at them both. Jazz looked up.

“You shouldn’t have come out,” he managed, already falling unconscious from the sedative, words slurring strangely even to his own audios. “What if you’d been wrong?”

“I couldn’t stand by and do nothing while he killed you.”

Jazz wanted to respond, but couldn’t.

.

.

.


	9. Chapter nine — The Road Back

Smokescreen was frantic when he got home and saw the broken door, the flame-scarred cavern, the spills of energon. He also had to deal with two traumatized young dragons, a pair of unconscious and injured mechs (with  _ Blades _ the only one awake enough to do any sort of explaining), and Starscream.

Jazz thought it might be the grace of Primus that both Starscream and Blades survived the older dragon’s prickly temper.

He didn’t think that until much later though, being one of the unconscious mechs in question.

Jazz woke up warm, and with his processor still fuzzy from the sedative. Warm was good. Wheeljack always kept the lab warm, and always put Jazz in his bed there when he was injured. There was something wrong with that thought, but he was still too processor-fuzzy to pin it down.

He didn’t hear Wheeljack humming. He booted up his visor, expecting to see the familiar sights of half-assembled equipment and strange trinkets and gadgets. Instead he saw light filtered through the black and white solar sail draped over his little resting space to keep in the heat. “Prowl,” he said, processor reorienting to where he was and what had happened.

At least he’d intended to say the dragon’s name. It came out more like, “Rrrow?”

Nevertheless Prowl turned his long neck to tuck his head under his wing and look at the stirring Jazz. “Yes, Jazz?”

Faced with the dragon’s attention, Jazz was suddenly unsure as to what he might have wanted to say. He wracked his fuzzy circuits for something,  _ anything _ , and finally, “You’re a nice dragon,” is what came out.

The massive fusion engine next to the dragon’s spark rumbled softly. Not, he thought, a growl. Which was good. He really didn’t want to piss off Prowl. “You’re a nice mech,” Prowl responded.

That didn’t sound pissed off. That sounded amused and, already strutless from the sedative, Jazz relaxed further. “‘Kay. What happened?”

It wasn’t Prowl who answered.

“You broke your slagging shoulder,” Blades called from outside the cocoon of warm scales and wings where Jazz currently rested. “Hit your head too. Your processors are already out of whack, so we didn’t worry too much about that. Also, that fire-ward crap gums up your systems something fierce and is  _ slagging impossible _ to wash off.”

_ Of course it was. It wasn’t really meant to be worn like Decepticon battle paint; Wheeljack designed it to protect our buildings from fire... _

Prowl withdrew his head, and Jazz couldn’t see him glaring at the helicopter, but he could hear it in the dragon’s voice. “Jazz is still resting.”

“That sedative’s wearing off fast,” Blades countered. “Slag-head’s going to start wiggling soon if he hasn’t already,” Jazz, who’d been about to shift, testing to see if he was able to stand, stopped with a huff. “Better he know what’s still wrong with him before he does. Speaking of,” he raised his voice to address Jazz directly again, “your shoulder’s wrapped and splinted as best I could, but you need to see a medic before too long, to weld it up, or it won’t heal right.  _ Don’t slagging stress it _ in the meantime.”

“I know how broken struts work,” Jazz called back.

“Whatever.” He heard Blades leave what he assumed was Prowl’s hoard-cavern.

“Ain’t even the worst injury I’ve ever taken from a fall,” Jazz muttered.

“But,” Prowl’s head returned to tuck under his wing with Jazz, “was it true, about a medic?”

Careful not to jar his shoulder, Jazz rolled over to get his feet under him; he did not  _ wiggle _ though. Balancing on the dragon’s leg where he’d been resting was interesting, but he didn’t fall. “Probably. It’d make me feel better to get it welded right, anyway.”

There was a pensive look in Prowl’s optics. “And you won’t be able to fly your kite until it’s healed.” It was a statement more than a question, but Jazz confirmed it with a soft  _ yeah _ anyway. “And Iacon won’t survive long enough for it to heal, then finish teaching us, will it?”

“Probably not.” Iacon might not have survived anyway. They were getting perilously close to the Prime’s intended bonding-orn, the orn the storm sorcerers were to fly to Iacon’s aid, and there was no telling how well the city had fared without the Prime there to fight.

Jazz was on his feet, and Prowl withdrew his wing, releasing all the pent up warmth and blasting him with the moon’s icy air. “We should talk to Smokescreen.” And because Jazz couldn’t climb up and cling to Prowl’s warm-scale armor like he usually did, Prowl deftly picked him up. Jazz wanted to protest that he was  _ injured _ , not  _ helpless _ , but being cradled against the massive spark of the dragon was so pleasant that the protest died unsaid.

Blades and Drift were gathered around Starscream’s cage with a collection of energon cubes — more than Jazz knew he had left of the ones he’d brought, so someone had gotten over the squick of drinking from Smokescreen’s kill. Drift was still covered in the ash-glow of the fire-ward. Silently Blades held out his hand to Starscream, who complained as he dug out a few shanix and handed them over. Jazz didn’t dare ask; he was afraid one of the two — or Drift — might actually tell him what they were betting on.

Instead Drift gestured to the battle kite as Jazz was set down. “Walk me through folding this thing since you’re not going to be using it soon.”

“I’m going to talk to Smokescreen,” Prowl said when Jazz looked up.

Jazz started to shrug, then winced. “Sure.” He joined the circle of mechs and held out his good hand. “Let me make sure nothing’s broken first.”

Miraculously, nothing was. Most of the fire-ward had burned away, leaving the blue-painted graphene sooty and ash-streaked, but untorn. All the struts and strings were intact, the kevlar shielding around the edges having absorbed the force of the impacts it’d taken in the fight. Jazz passed it back to Drift, and together they broke it down into its much more easily stored and carried form.

Jazz ignored Blades and Starscream as they bickered. Better Blades, who seemed to enjoy it some, than himself.

By the time they were done with folding the kite, Smokescreen was returning with Prowl and a very subdued Bluestreak following. Jazz tried to get up, but Drift put his hand on Jazz's good shoulder. "Stay, or  _ I'll _ sedate you."

Jazz just looked up at Smokescreen with a  _ what can you do _ look. Smokescreen looked amused.

"Prowl," the older dragon said seriously, "has convinced me to release you. You've done what you said in teaching them both to fly, and in the time your shoulder takes to heal he could finish training Bluestreak at least to his level of skill."

Release? "Thanks," Jazz had nothing else to say. He'd expected the dragon to insist on holding Jazz to his word.

Smokescreen leaned in close, optic almost filling Jazz's vision. "Whatever you think of my kind, I've no ill feelings towards yours, in general," he growled, almost threatening.

Jazz grinned. "Didn't actually think you did."

"Good." The older dragon left, leaving the mechs to the mercy of his two kids.

Bluestreak flung himself down on the ground with a  _ thump _ that left Jazz once again staring at the dragon’s teeth. "Don't  _ leave _ !" he wailed.

Jazz looked to the others, then back up at the distraught dragon. "Have'ta. I gotta let my own guardians know I'm okay." Primus, Optimus (and maybe even Wheeljack, if Prime had gotten to Vos and called back to Iacon) had to be utterly frantic by now.

Besides, he didn't trust Starscream to actually send the seeker storm-sorcerers to Iacon if he let the prince go back without him.

"And Jazz is injured," Prowl said quietly. "He needs to be repaired by a medic of his own kind."

Bluestreak sniffled. "You'll come back."

He didn't want to make any promises he couldn't keep. The moon was, literally, a world away from Iacon and more than just the threat of terrorcons barred him from returning. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go from one set of walls to another. "I'll try."

There wasn't much to pack. The battle kite went into Jazz's subspace and Drift took possession of the climbing gear, using a rope to secure it to his frame — not that it was needed either, since Smokescreen carried them out.

Only the last kite, the dragon one he'd packed on a whim when he left, was left.

Looking at it again, now, Jazz didn't think it was a very realistic rendition of a dragon at all. When he'd made it, he'd been working off descriptions of dragons in stories. Now that he'd spent time with them, all he could see were the flaws in those old stories. The tail was too short, the wings attached wrong. The painted optics held no life at all.

Still, it was a beautiful kite, if an imperfect dragon. He held it out to Prowl. "Here. To remember me by."

"I don't believe I could ever forget," Prowl said seriously, "but I will keep it safe."

_ I should say good bye _ , Jazz thought. He opened his mouth to do so, but the words stuck in his vocalizer. Instead he said, "Be sure you do," and winced at how pathetic that sounded.

Prowl just nuzzled him gently. "Go. Your city's waiting."

Jazz went.

.

.

This time it was Jazz riding in Blades' interior through the moon's eerie mists and out into space. Drift clung to an irate and impatient Starscream, who was  _ very upset _ about being forced to fly slower than a mere helicopter.

Smokescreen had held the seeker still while Drift climbed on him. "Try to throw me," the guttermech hissed with all the venom of someone who'd seen every sort of betrayal possible and was perfectly willing to strike first, "or leave Blades and Jazz behind, and I'll gut you before I lose my grip."

And he'd jabbed the seeker lightly with the shiv for emphasis.

The result: Starscream flew behind Blades, but treated them to a constant running commentary over comms about how horrible this all was, how he deserved better, he was  _ Starscream, Prince of Vos! _

Jazz didn't care. He let the constant stream of complaints, and Blades' retorts, wash over him without listening to them.

Even the firestorm of reentering Cybertron's atmosphere failed to catch much of his interest.

He could feel it though, through Blades’ heat-shielded interior. He commed Drift, to make sure the fire-ward from the fight was holding up. He’d forgotten about it, but the ash-flame colored substance burned away, leaving the plating beneath cool just as designed. Jazz made a note to inform Wheeljack how well his stuff worked. Iacon had been using it on the buildings since it’d been developed, but this was the first time anyone had tested it on an object entering the atmosphere.

Wheeljack would be pleased.

But the thought of going back, telling his guardian everything, held no pleasure for him. No excitement. When he’d first imagined going on an adventure, he’d thought that  _ happily ever after _ meant coming back a hero. Telling everyone the stories. Holding court with the rest of his creche and watching their optics go wide with wonder, as he knew his own always had when he listened to the stories of various knights.

Instead all he could think of was the daily slog of Decepticons and terrorcons. War made his spark feel heavy, and he dreaded going back to it.

But Iacon needed him, needed its night runner, didn’t it?

The firestorm cleared and Jazz watched the three floating cities of Vos appear in the distance.

The great platforms trailed bits and pieces of debris caught in the cities’ repulsors, giving them the appearance of inverted mountain tops. The towers themselves gleamed golden in the growing sunlight of dawn. As they came closer, Jazz started seeing the flags, waving from every spire. Even with his spark heavy with melancholy thoughts, he couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to fly among those towers with his battle kite.

It wasn’t until they started seeing the faint dots of seekers all going about their business among the towers that they were joined in the air by a trine of the Vosk royal guard. Starscream’s constant stream of whining was familiar to them too, Jazz thought with the shadow of a rueful grin.

Starscream leapt forward impatiently on his thrusters, then — with a hiss of pain over the commlines — slowed back down to pace behind Blades. Drift. Mech could be serious as engine-failure sometimes.

They landed on the indicated platform, Starscream deliberately dropping Drift the last bit as he transformed. Blades set down gently and waited for Jazz to climb out.

Prime waited there, with two seekers, one blue and the other purple, whom Jazz vaguely recognized as Starscream’s trinemates, the other two princes of Vos. Seeing the Prime, whole and standing on his own, Jazz went dizzy with relief and leaned against Blades for balance. He managed to casually wave his good hand in greeting. “Hey, bossmech.”

Optimus chuckled in response. “Didn’t I tell you, Thundercracker? Jazz came through.”

The blue seeker stepped forward, and Jazz pushed himself away from Blades respectfully. He didn’t feel up to the effort of kneeling, but the least he could do was stand. Blades transformed and steadied Jazz, which he couldn’t help but be grateful for. “Vos is in your debt. I understand that in Iacon it is traditional for a knight to bond to a mech he’s rescued —”

_ “No fragging way!” “Not if he was the last mech on Cybertron!” _

Jazz and Starscream looked at each other, not  _ surprised _ the other felt the same, but still a bit startled by the shared vehemence. Childishly, Jazz stuck his tongue out at the red and blue seeker; Starscream huffed.

Thundercracker smiled. “I see. Then what reward would you ask of Vos for the return of our Prince?”

“Just send the storm-sorcerers to Iacon, like you promised. All this ain’t worth anything if Iacon falls.” Which wasn’t quite true, but the prince didn’t want to hear about taking on Scrapper and teaching the young dragons to fly.

“Of course.” Thundercracker stepped back and turned back toward the city.  _ “RAINMAKERS,” _ he called, aloud and over a commline to the entirety of Vos,  _ “TRANSFORM AND ASCEND! TO IACON!” _

The response started slow. One trine. Then two.

Then dozens… hundreds of mechs responded to the call, rising up and transforming. They circled the city, like a swarm of insecticons, then flew away. To Iacon.

“Again you have our thanks,” Thundercracker said before leaving, taking Starscream with him. The purple seeker hugged Jazz, tightly, fiercely, before following.

“You have a ‘kick me’ sign on your back,” Drift informed him. With a huff, Jazz ripped the piece of flimsy away and crumpled it up. Obviously, those two deserved each other. Jazz wondered what Thundercracker had done to deserve those other jerks.

Their departure left them alone on the landing platform with the Prime.

“Jazz —”

“Optimus —”

They smiled at each other. Jazz bowed. “I listen, my liege.”

“For possibly the first time since you became my squire, I might actually believe that, youngling.” Jazz chuckled, because it was true. He’d never been the most diligent in following his knight’s instructions. Optimus sobered then, serious. “Slaying a dragon is no easy feat. Worthy of a knight. And you are, if you wish to be, more than worthy of becoming one of the Paladins of Primus, I think.”

Jazz stiffened. “Didn’t slay the dragon.”

That took the Prime aback. “Really? Then how…?”

“We made friends.”

Optimus was silent for a very long moment as seeker engines still roared overhead, and Jazz nearly cringed. Every story ever told about dragons had emphasized their hunger, their greed, their ruthlessness. What could Prime possibly think of Jazz actually befriending such a creature? He wanted to protest. Dragons weren’t really like the stories. He’d gone up there hoping to sneak into the lair of a vicious beast, and found a struggling family. But everything he wanted to say fell flat against generations of knights who had perished to slay the beasts of legend, and even flatter against those who had never been rescued, snatched up and eaten under the light of the moon.

“That,” Prime finally said slowly, “sounds like an even greater feat. I’m proud of you.”

Jazz nearly collapsed with relief. “I… Iacon’ll be alright?”

“You may rest assured. The Decepticons are as depleted as we. Without the terrorcons, Iacon will hold against them, as we always have. Soon they will retreat, and we will rebuild.”

“Then,” Jazz looked straight into the Prime’s optics. “I would like to be released from my service as your squire. I… I can’t go back. Not right now. Maybe not ever.”

Finally saying it hurt more than he’d thought it would, but he was sure. Prime was silent for a very long moment, then he gave a great sigh through his ventilation system. His gaze softened, and in his knight’s optics, Jazz saw understanding, not anger. “Wheeljack knew this would happen. I didn’t believe him, but he told me that if you left Iacon, saw those places he knew you dreamed about, you wouldn’t return. He wanted me to tell you that newsparks can’t stay new… and he wants you to send him anything interesting you find in your travels.”

Wheeljack  _ knew? _ Jazz wasn’t sure what he thought of that, so he simply forged on. “Drift’ll make a better squire than I ever did anyway.”

Drift, who’d been lurking at the edge of the conversation hoping the Prime didn’t actually notice him, jumped in surprise with a squeak. “Me?!”

Prime took a step back and regarded the other mechs who’d returned with his squire. He recognized the markings of one of the infamous pirate crews of the Rust Sea, but it was the grime-covered street mech who held his attention. “Will he?”

“Yeah,” Jazz insisted. “You and he’ll get along great. He’s responsible, follows orders — more than me anyway — honorable, brave as all get, and  _ really _ wants to learn to use a sword. He’s already great with that knife of his.”

Shyly, Drift tried to hide the shiv, but the Prime didn’t let him. Holding out one hand he asked, “May I see it?”

The crude bit of sharpened steel was the same as always. A bit of scavenged insulated wire wrapped around the ‘hilt’ so that the wielder didn’t cut himself. Streaks of Scrapper’s energon still clung to the metal, where it hadn’t yet flaked away. Otherwise it was just a sharp bit of shattered sheeting from the side of a building.

“It’s a good weapon,” Prime said, handing it back. “Worthy of honor. And I would be honored to have its bearer as my squire.”

“Say yes,” Jazz whispered, and Drift gave him a  _ look _ .

“I suppose I don’t have anything better to do,” Drift said instead, and Prime laughed.

“Like calls to like,” he said to Jazz. Then turned to Blades. “And what can Iacon offer you?”

Blades shrugged. “Iacon doesn’t exactly have coffers of gold anymore, so not much. Besides, I came along on this little shindig because I owed Jazz. S’far as I’m concerned he and I are square now, and you don’t owe me a slagging thing.”

“An honorable pirate.”

“Slagging  _ right _ .”

Prime turned back to his  _ former _ squire. “And where will you go now, Jazz?”

Jazz hadn’t thought that far. Back to the moon, is what he wanted to say, but he wasn’t even sure that was true. He  _ wanted _ to go back to Prowl and Bluestreak, sure, but he thought that the rest of Cybertron deserved a look-see too. “Dunno.”

“You could sign on with us for a bit,” Blades offered casually, the sharp movements of his rotors betraying how not-casual the offer really was. “The Protectobots’ll be happy to have you for as long as you want — you’re our kind of crazy — and First Aid is a slagging good medic. You still need one of those to weld your shoulder back together.”

And the Protectobots flew the airways of the Rust Sea. Jazz had always wanted to see the Rust Sea… and the Sonic Canyons and all the rest. He smiled. “Sure.”

Prime nodded his approval. “Then take this,” he unsubspaced a kite.  _ The kite _ . The one Jazz had left at his knight’s bedside. “I don’t believe you’ll be coming back for it this time.”

Gently Jazz traced his fingers over the blue cybertriops he’d started painting there. “No, I won’t.”

.

.

.


	10. Epilogue — Master of Two Worlds

The skimmer both was and wasn’t like the battle kite. When he and Wheeljack had built the battle kite, they had used the best materials available. Light and strong, it was a dream come true. The Sea of Rust, however, didn’t have buildings to jump from, cave walls to swing from. He could use it among the rigging, but away from the  _ Guardian Glaive _ there just weren’t any anchor points. He occasionally jumped from the skyship and soared down, dancing in the wind and utterly free, but then he got to ground and the Protectobots had to come pick him up.

He mentioned this in one of his letters to Wheeljack, and his Guardian sent back a blueprint (and also a box of vials full of acid ward gel — for emergencies). Unlike the battle kite, which had only been possible because of the materials and tools in Wheeljack’s lab, the skimmer was much simpler. The platform, just big enough for Jazz to stand on, was made of naturally occurring metal foam, which was light and strong and spongy and didn’t break on impact. They — Jazz, First Aid, and Groove — vacuum-sealed a layer of plastic sheeting to the board to give it color and keep it smoothly skimming over the mixed rust-sand and rust-saturated oil of the Rust Sea. The rest: the sail was made from the same nylon he now made most of his pleasure kites from, and the frame and handles from hollowed tubes of galvanized aluminum. A small thruster-engine bought from a merchant (read “pirate”) that had recently visited Vos kept him moving when there wasn’t enough wind to catch in the sail, which was rare in the Rust Sea. The skimmer looked a bit like a skyship, simplified and reduced down to only its most essential components.

He thought a lot about Wheeljack, though he didn’t realize how much he missed his guardian until he looked at the finished skimmer and saw it had the mechanic’s green stripes and red trim. With a laugh, when Blades asked him what he was going to name his new toy, he painted the words  _ Beyond the Far Horizon _ in small, private glyphs on the sail.

It wasn’t a kite, but he learned to do jumps and twirls and spins anyway. He started spending more and more time away from the ship, worrying at first that it might anger Captain Hot Spot, but the Prime-sized sky-blue mech had only laughed.

“You have that look in your optics,” he said. “The wind calls your name and you have a need in your spark to answer. If you were less a Knight, and more a pirate, I’d watch you closely for mutiny, but you don’t want the ship… just the sail.” He put his huge hand on Jazz’s shoulder then — the one that First Aid had so skillfully repaired — and the gesture was so much like Prime that his spark  _ ached _ . “One of these orns, you won’t come back. You’ll take your freedom and cut your ties. When that orn comes, know that you go with my blessing.”

_ Just like Wheeljack, too _ , Jazz thought. He couldn’t deny it. “I’ll write.” With a grin he held out his hand in the pirates’ gesture of promise. “It’s an accord.”

Hot Spot smiled and shook the offered hand. “I’ll hold you to it.”

And so it was with the Captain’s blessing that Jazz started ranging even further from the ship, taking his share of energon, and trading odd jobs to the occasional prospector who braved the rust to make his fortunes for additional supplies. Like those prospectors, he carried an acid-resistant thermal tarp wrapped around his frame like a shawl to protect him from the weather. To those mechs he was a fey creature, neither prospector nor pirate. He came and went by no rules they could see. He traded, told stories, listened to their music and always declined their offers of a bed for the night. He preferred the open air and the moon, and it wasn't long before they started telling their own stories about the strange wanderer. He was crazy, fearless, they said. He was a spirit that faded when the moon rose, he had magic that kept the dragons away, was dragon-sparked, or maybe was a dragon in disguise, they whispered even quieter.

In truth there was nothing mystical about Jazz's lack of fear. He knew how much energon a dragon's frame needed each orn, and the Rust Sea simply didn't have that sort of prey. The mechs — the prospectors and pirates — were the only large prey to be had, and them spread too thinly across the oiled sands to be worth the hunt.

So he sheltered fearlessly in the shadows of the occasional tall spire that lanced up into the sky like a spear point, and which reminded him of the stone spires of the moon.

He climbed one once, just to see if maybe it had a dragon living in it. There wasn’t, and he soared back to the ground on his battle kite and drove back to where he’d left the skimmer.

He didn’t stop looking.

Tonight he flew a box kite — the one painted with blue cybertriops — and watched a storm on the horizon from beneath the shelter of one of those spires. A dark shadow that he knew would be upon him all too quickly, he tried to decide if this was a dust storm that would blow in and turn the morning sky red until the rust settled, or a thunderhead filled with acid rain. One he could weather beneath the tarp; the other might need one of his precious few vials of Wheeljack's acid-ward, which couldn't be replaced in a hurry.

A shadow flew over the moon and Jazz looked up to see the first dragon he'd seen since he left Smokescreen's lair. Maybe he should have been terrified, but he recognized those beautiful black and white wings.

"Prowl," he said quietly, reverently, as the dragon landed.

"You are very difficult to find," said the dragon instead of a greeting, which made Jazz chuckle. Yep, that was definitely Prowl. "You told me about that cave and I went to Iacon, but didn't see your kite. I couldn't ask your people where you'd gone, so I guessed that if you weren't there, you'd go to either the Rust Sea or the Sonic Canyons, since you wanted to see those so much. But the Sea is very large, and it took much searching."

"So how'd you find me?" Even with a dragon's flight, searching all of the Rust Sea was quite a feat, and Jazz hadn't exactly stayed in one place waiting to be found.

"Your tarp is the same color as Smokescreen's plating."

Jazz blinked his visor, and flicked on his headlights to look back at the tarp strung up to protect the hollow in the spire he'd planned to spend the night in. Sure enough it was the same red color as the older dragon had been, lacking only the blue and yellow to be an exact match. He laughed. "So it is."

Prowl settled down on the rust sand and held his wing up in invitation. Jazz pulled down the tarp, subspaced his supplies, and dragged the skimmer over to the dragon. "Interesting device," the dragon said. "Because of the scarcity of the spires, I assume. I can carry it, in my subspace, if you want to keep it. It'll be good to have, for when I'm hunting."

Did that mean — "I don't think I could live in a cave, Prowl."

A serious look. "Fortunately I can live anywhere. The caves on the moon are just traditional, to keep us close to the lunar Well of Sparks. I haven't felt like following very many traditions recently."

"What about your cybertriops?"  _ What about your hoard? _

"Bluestreak's taking care of them. We can visit. He would like that."

_ Maybe I am dragon-sparked _ , Jazz thought, curling up under Prowl's wing. "I would like that too."

Mech and dragon curled up with each other to sleep. And when the storm hit, the acid-proof wings of his companion proved to be the perfect shelter.

.

.

_ "... So begins the story of Jazz — Hero, Wanderer, Dragonfriend, and Master of the Wind." _

_ Drift chuckled as Wing shook himself free of the spell the story had woven. _

_ One of the newest creche of newsparks in Iacon, built with the assistance of the Vosk seekers, Wing wanted so badly to be a knight. It was obvious in the way he hid on the training grounds and gazed longingly at their blessed swords. He was alone in the creche, though, in that desire. The little clique who called themselves the Aerialbots all wanted to become storm-sorcerers, and both Powerglide and Tracks followed Ironhide around like lost zap-ponies. Wing was afraid that because he'd been built a flyer, he wouldn't be allowed into the Knighthood. _

_ Drift knew better. Already there were a dozen knights practically lined up outside the creche-building, waiting for the young mechs to be released by the caretakers to find guardians who would care for and teach them, hoping Wing would choose them. _

_ "You knew him?" Wing asked, optics still glazed over, imagination still trying to picture Jazz doing end-over-end flips on his kite. _

_ "Yeah... and if he could learn to fly without wings of his own," Drift reached over to gently poke Wing's nasal ridge, "you can certainly learn to do anything  _ **_you_ ** _ want. Storm-sorcerer, builder, blacksmith... or a Knight of Primus. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise." _

_ "I won't." _

.

.

.

End

**Author's Note:**

> [To Fly, by Portland Taiko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv9CKhFMD5Y)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Archipelago](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8015134) by [Surefall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Surefall/pseuds/Surefall)




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